The presence and sybolism of animals in psychosis

I found that animals were often included in my psychotic experiences.  The first time was when I was lying in bed looking at the ceiling and I experienced a load of strange things flowing out of my body through my core of my body and out of my head.  I saw the product of this on the ceiling where the spirits of dogs and cats had shot through my body and out onto the ceiling.  I was told subconsciously that I had to be the ‘Guardian of the animals’. All the animals were displeased though as I smoke cigarettes and as they went through my body they got smoke in them.  I was upset because I had hurt them and they’re faces were all disgrumpled and displeased.

Another time I experienced animals was when I started to take my medication, which made me feel like I had horses in my veins.  I felt them as tiny little creatures getting blocked in my veins and sometimes they would kick or bite me.  I had no way of controlling them and it really hurt.  In this hallucination was a race to get into my head, by spirits of other people and animals.  They would try to talk themselves into the top of my head.  I felt like I had the whole world in my head, it was full of strands of string -like stuff that would move about in my head and tickle me or hurt me like roots growing into my brain.  Flowers would borrow into my brain as well.  I don’t really know how to describe it. 

A different time I believed I had dogs in my stomach where they would reside and need to be fed.  I thought that this was the real reason why I was able to remain quite thin in respect to how much I ate.  I needed to feed them by thinking of where they are in my stomach or gut and also they sometimes would be in my toes as well.  However when I ate the animals and things would turn into annoying little spirits and would float around my body where I needed to let them out, but was only able to by opening my head some how.  It was all very surreal. 

I think the symbolism of animals was again a fear thing that I naturally had an affinity for animals and I cared for them more than humans in a way, so it was fear of hurting them or they would hurt me and I felt powerless to hurt them back as they were animals.  Again there was a theme of every one knowing what to do other than me, and I had to learn in a sink or swim type scenario.  I hated the way the rules were never clear and I was always living in fear of being hurt or hurting others.

The fear of mental illness

The fear of mental illness is that things happen to you by forces outside/inside yourself that you have no control over and don’t understand.  It is the fear of the unknown, fear of not knowing the outcome of what is happening and fear of why it is happening specifically to you.  These are things that are not the breakdown itself, but actually things do happen to you.  An example of this is where strands of things that feel like soft wire form a mesh in my head and I can feel them root in areas of my head/ brain.  It is something that always freaks me out.  I think that the wire things are re-routing my brain, or that it will cause me to think differently. 

I believe in normal people psychospiritual development occurs at night, whilst asleep.  I think this is because you are aware to  a certain extent but not so aware that it disturbs you.  I think what happens to people like me, this development occurs when we can’t sleep and the outside forces come to do developmental things to you and if you are fully aware it is like treason. This is because you are considered to be asleep and if not you are in the mentally unwell category, but it isn’t that you are really mentally ill, it is that you freak out at the stuff that is happening to you that makes you unwell!  Also because you are aware of what is happening often I find I will ruin my (belief of) psychospiritual development because I answer back and think whilst it is occurring and due to this they get angry and suddenly everything goes upside down, like subconscious things like breathing becomes conscious, and talking is something that becomes thinking. 

Noises and sounds have messages in them, like whispers, or like subconscious understandings.  They cause your mind to race with thoughts and ideas are uncontrollable (about what could be happening to you, or what the end result may be).  Large bursts of insight can occur which can be a positive thing in a way, but  the content is not necessarily real or positive.  It causes a rush of fear and excitement, so many emotions occurring at one time it is sensory overload. 

The voices of loved ones, friends and family begin to emanate from nowhere (somewhere in the sky) or from any medium where there is noise.  Knocking can turn into a sentence, music into brainwashing and paranoia.  It is like constant scrutiny upon one’s personal space.  They would talk incessantly over your own thoughts until long past you thought you were mad.  I became accustomed to it and their constant criticism.  It made you aware of everything you did or said, to be polite at all times (because otherwise it would feed them with ammunition).  I would try to answer back to correct their negativity with truth and points of injustice, until I got worn down to the very edge of insanity to then cry and cry for days.  The voices told me of nasty things about myself, made me suspicious of people I was close to and cared for.  In the end I prayed to God for help to stop them, (not knowing what else would work) and then I appologised to God for asking for help for being so awful before  having turned my back on God when I had gone through my boyfriend’s death about 2 years ago.  In actual fact this stopped the voices whether it was God or my belief in God, I am not able to say but the voices did go away after that night.

The unfairness of it all

Now everyone, this is more of a venting session than an informative writing as this is in the present.  I am sick to death of people using my mental health issues against me!  My EX boyfriend who shall remain nameless, used to use my illness against me all the time, for things that any normal other girlfriend would get paranoid about.  Such instances like I found my emails saved on his profile (not password protected as we were meant to ‘trust each other and have nothing to hide’ ) under a saved search.  I think most girls would get a bit upset about that I am sure it is not a side effect of my psychosis!  Also I angered myself and self-harmed last year, not to actually get pity or cry for help, rather to lash out because I knew if I didn’t do this I would break something in the house.  He stuck with me for at least 6 months after I did this and dealt with it really well (actually) at the time, however told me later after we had broken up (July)  this August that he had decided then that there was no future for us because of me behaving in such a way.  He could have told me that nearer the time instead of me wasting my time with him, as I am no spring chicken now!!!!!  I wasted a good year and 10 months with him until he finally drove me mad with his noncommittal attitude and never giving me any priorities (I was last after -in no particular order- family, friends, football, poker and work). 

So anyway, I just realised another thing had been going on  while we were going out, he had been receiving kisses and stuff from a girl all throughout our relationship on face book, which I had never seen before (I think he had hidden it before) and I emailed him about it last night, saying I was disappointed really, and he’s response was ‘You are a paranoid nutter’……which I think again is him just using my mental health illness against me again!  I think it is SICK that people will be so prejudiced against us that are trying so hard to be normal and to get on with our lives which is NOT easy with our disposition.  He is just baiting me being hurtful and demeaning.  There aren’t many people who manage to get out of mental illness like I have seen and experienced I was one of the bad cases I was told and the fact I have come out the other side to be almost normal and functioning has been not short of a miracle.  I am not saying it is anything special about me, there are other people who have done it, but there are few of us.  What I am trying to stress is the fact that we have managed it (almost) was not only a very difficult uphill struggle but that once we have managed it the last thing we need are callous people in our lives that use it against us when it is nothing to do with our mental illness!  I bet I am not the only one here, and please comment if you find the same thing.  I was reacting as any other normal girl would…..I do know my parameters!  I know when I am ill and I know when I am being unreasonable and delusional.  In fact I never was delusional with him, but he went on and on about me being a ‘psycho’ so much I began to doubt myself.  So I am just saying to anyone who is unfortunate enough to be around these poisonous people like him get them out of your life because they drag you down and hurt you for no reason other than they themselves don’t want to admit they are in the wrong.

Just for more information about people being prejudiced against people with mental health issues…….I was working in Bank of America in London for about a year.  I was promoted by an MD asking personally for me to be his PA.  I went on to fill this role and I was good at it, efficient and timely, organised I even did his personal stuff for him like organise his phone line set up and imminent move to UK from Japan.  He and I got on really well he was a great man to work for.  Then as he was promoted to a higher position I thought I better tell my line manager about my illness just for safe guarding.  It isn’t like I felt under pressure or stressed or that I couldn’t cope….I thought I would say just in case the time came when I did feel like that.  So I told my line manager about my illnesses.  She seemed to take it really well at first, but then a day later or something she told me it was too stressful for me and I should stand down and do admin again.  I was devastated as I loved my job and really was enjoying working for my boss.  Also it was meant to be my ticket into going temp to perm and I was due to go perm soon.  I ended up leaving soon after I turned admin again as it wasn’t challenging enough for me.  This another example of how people will use a mental illness against you. 

It angers me so much that this happens.  It is unfair and cruel, but what can you expect in such a cut throat world now a days.  I want to fight for people with mental illness that are nearly recovered but still have a history of it to be able to stand up to people like these.  It is not only ignorance but pure hard heartedness.

Like telepathy

The feeling of your mind being accessable to everyone is something most fearful causing paranoia.  It happens when other people talk and they seem to directly answer your thoughts in their sentence though on a totally different topic of conversation to what your thinking of.  It always catches you off guard at first then gradually you start to look for the signs in the speech. The whole process of a mental break down is mental overload.  Thoughts you have are uncontrollable and then other people seem to know what you are thinking as well.  It gets a bit too close to home, too personal.  It makes you want to hide away, even kill yourself out of shame.  Total exposure of your deepest darkest feelings and fears.  Then there is broad casting that is actually a scientific word but I use it in this context …..that you feel your thoughts are heard by lots of people even masses, it gives you a bit of a god complex because people respond to you.  I remember once and this may be a coincidence but I was shopping and I had a list of stuff to get consisting of spinach, double cream, 3 more items I wrote to go with it, can’t remember now.  I was standing in the que to pay and I saw 3 other people with the same 5 items in they’re basket…….it was really weird and quite freaky.  I also remember a women saying ‘oh spinach I really fancy spinach today’.  I mean spinach isn’t a usual thing to eat really is it?  Yet 5 people were buying it in this small store and 4 were in the que to pay like me……..It may just be a coincidence as I said but made me feel too exposed.  At the cashier I saw the lady had a bandage support on her wrist.  I wondered to myself what she had done to herself, and at that point I could feel something in my head communicate with her….like the others (voices) and suddenly my head was filled with laughter and she instantly giggled as well????  It was really odd, but that is so hard to describe properly.  It was almost like the lady cashier had said a joke and the voices were responding to it. 

There was a time where I watched football on TV and I felt like I was controlling the game.  The bad thing is my team never wins and even when I do play games on playstation or anything like that it is as though think I am the opposing team, but anyway, I was trying to control a live football match with my mind, and I was dead chuffed as it went swimmingly and they passed the ball everywhere I looked.  They did win that time and I felt like I was helping them, somehow!  Something about the evil eye and quick glances, dotting eyes about the screen looking for places to pass and also shooting an evil eye look to someone to stop them getting the ball.  Hmmmmm.  I don’t know it was like I had learnt it from somewhere.  Men probably do it all the time!!!!

The telepathy is really hard to describe and probably people do it all the time a bit, just for us it is so meaningful and often that it becomes part of life.  It occurs occasionally now, but I ignore it now not putting so much relevance into it, but I still feel the weighted words impact on me at the time. 

I felt that I was able impart information someone else had said (though I would not be able to repeat it) to someone else that had not heard that information yet, though my mind.  It was a strange. I also knew it came from me as I was the only person who had been told it.  The person would say it in exactly those words  repeated.  In this moment a feeling of pressure released in my mind, not quite like a headache leaving but more subtle.  It was a flowing feeling out of my mind and directed to someone else.  Yeah it sounds all very far-fetched I know but this happened the one time.

Thoughts I believe are energy created and once energy is created it can not be destroyed so thoughts carry on into the universe, so I always try to be wary of my thoughts.  I know you can’t hold all of them back but you can censor them, in case they hurt someone.  This quote is from a book I know but which one I am not sure of.

The devil and secrets

The valley:   This was a place in my mind the very darkest and blackest part of my mind (literally not symbolically). There would be other people there as spirits trying to sleep, but this was made difficult because there were two layers of people some in Hell at the bottom of my head and others in Heaven which where at the top of my head standing on a shelf as it were. The people in hell were able to sleep because they had the ground to sleep on but the people in heaven had to stand up all the time and could not sleep. In this instance I was in Hell. I was trying to sleep (I was in bed trying to sleep at the time but was seeing only inside my mind where this was taking place, if you can imagine the world disappearing and this reality taking over this was what it was like), but because I was in hell the devil would come and slip into your dreams (‘she’ would slide up next to your ear whilst you were asleep and whisper questions that she wanted to know about usually gossip, which I never had so instead she would ask me riddles and I would not be able to work out what to say as I never knew the answers. This process was really to get information from you about your most trusted secrets. She then would use this information and fly up to heaven where she would tell the heavenly boding people of your secrets as there she is under Gods command. So it was a process of taking from the undeserving and giving to the deserving. I felt though as always that the devil was testing me and that there was only one right answer, not just information you could give her, and I was fearful of what she would do if I got the answer wrong or lied. She hissed at me ‘what will you give to me?’ I was all a blunder and could not think of anything that was not needed, so blurted out ‘my head’ which at the time had been swapped for someone else’s so was not really mine to give away! It was all a mess. As time wore in it became apparent that this place functioned on people giving their hearts to the devil. The devil in the form of a v shape fluttering around would take the heart of the person in hell and then give it to a person in heaven. Then the people in heaven would feel for the people in hell and their hearts filtered down to the people in hell anyway, not the same ones, but hearts none the less. The saints march also took place in the valley. It would occur just as you wanted to go to sleep and you would see millions of people marching with palms singing some Christian hymn. They marched over you and you had to pretend you were dead or asleep of they would take your soul? I wasn’t sure what they actually did because I managed to not have it done to me! But I knew all those in hell were fearful of these saints and I felt that fear gripping me.

There seems to be an inherent theme with spiritual/ religious things in these so-called ’tests’ that I had been administered, in my mind.  It was almost like my mind didn’t think normally all the time, and so when I did have a psychotic episode, my mind was in over-drive and wanting over stimulation.  However it still doesn’t make sense that it was all so symbolic.  Maybe because the mind doesn’t want to make tests out of trivial matters and it always has to be a matter of life and death in a spiritual sense?  I am not sure.  Maybe this was the only thing I would respond to as nothing else would matter enough?  I am sure everyone’s experience of illness is slightly different but I have heard that there is often a theme like this in it about religion.  In a way it did make you feel like you were burdened with a test that you needed to pass and get right, because the religious aspect was so strong it made you believe in it.  Though I am not a practicing Christian, and would describe myself as more spiritual than anything else.  It was actually terrifying at the time, not because of the devil being in my head, but that you never knew the consequences of your actions.  Unlike normal life where you know what will happen if you do something……it was full of foreboding, fear of fear, fear of not knowing anything.  It was a scam though, the mind destructing itself……I discovered with all these things they lived of the fear so much that you became scared of everything, what you thought, what you did, what you didn’t do, what others did, said and thought.  It wore me down mentally over periods of months and months, gradually until you give up caring…..but this is the key!  You have to not care about yourself, or others in these delusions because though you are heightened in empathy throughout this, it makes you fearful about everything.  I gradually began to not play the tests any more, I learnt that there was a common theme and that this theme made me fearful and was not working for me.  I would lie awake at night and watch hallucinations project themselves on my walls, but not react.  I began to be a third person of myself!  I have to admit it wasn’t exactly a conscious choice and I believe most of this occurring was due to me being so worn down by it all I just couldn’t react like I used to.  This was the beginning of me getting my life back together, though I didn’t recognise it at the time.

It’s like the most beautiful dream

After having had a comment about whether or not I would kill someone I have decided to write some of the more positive aspects of my mental illness tonight.  I hope those of you reading this are able to interpret my last writings as what they were?  I hope you can catch my drift as it is difficult to express them in the best way and sometimes I struggle to describe it as accurate as I felt.  So please read my reply to that comment if this is something that worries you as well.

Into the dream world……….So during parts of my illness I experienced very spiritual things, almost what I may describe as enlightening experiences.  I was doped up on diazepam I think at the time because a psychiatrist had just seen me and gave me them to take.  I was sitting in my bedroom gazing at things my eyes were all blurry and everything had a lovely dreamy haze to it.  I was looking at everything peacefully contemplating how beautiful everything looked when I observed my jewelry hanging on my walls in decorative holders and noticed that  anything with glass or stones had a hologram of a person inside.  It was totally 3 dimensional and in a purple/ pink colour.  I looked in the mirror and also saw that I had a head band of holograms around my head in pairs but a chain, so each pair was together and there was a little gap and then another pair of spirits or something 3 dimensional around my head.  My natural thought was that the pair of spirits were of my friends who were with their lovers and I was instrumental in keeping their love alive, which was a really lovely thought for me. 

I also remember sitting in our kitchen where I was looking through walls and seeing large balls like the bollards you get in the sea or deep-sea mines or something?  I could see through the floor and see pictures of things people usually and spirits of people.  I also saw hovering in the air, two people (which I thought was myself and my present boyfriend) as a hologram and they would revolve and on each revolution a ‘layer’ of the person would disappear and you would see more of the true spirit and essence of who that person really was, which was more and more stunningly beautiful as each revolution took place.  Finally at the last revolutions they developed into animals (dogs actually) which was pretty strange!!! Two German Shepard dogs!  But it was awe-inspiring to see such amazing stuff.

When I was in hospital I wanted to rescue a friend who was in with me that I had met on the ward.  I told him we’d go for a walk outside and my plan was to take him home to my parents house…..god only knows why because they would only cart me back again!  But anyway, I dragged him out and we got some of the way, but he got scared and said he had to go back.  I decided that I had got so far I may as well get as far as possible……so I walked along Eastbourne dual carriage way and on the way I found a shopping trolley that was left by the side of the road.  I was angry at the world for some reason and I decided the best way of demonstrating this was to have a protest in the shopping trolley!  So i sat in the shopping trolley by the side of the dual carriage way crossed legged and arms folded with a scowl on my face staring at all the drivers passing me.  It was in hindsight pretty amusing.

So some of the things I experienced were not all bad.  Also in hindsight I would never change it because it was a huge learning curve for me and I learnt loads about myself and my perception of the world through it.  I realised I was really an empathic person, that I saw beauty in the most mundane of normal things, that I feel honoured now to have experienced.  It is almost like I have been let into a secret world that hardly anyone else has been able to experience and to feel and touch and see the things that are most beautiful.  Also the distressing parts were character building and made me a stronger person in the end.  It was often interesting how I responded to them as I would show the true depth of my personality.  When I feel down in my head and was in a dark treacherous hellish place my first concern was about my boyfriend and if he was experiencing that as well.  I feared for others all the time, thinking that what I was experiencing was somehow now the norm and that others were in it not just me.  I worried that I was thinking negative thoughts about people, I worried that I hurt souls, spirits of people etc.  I put myself last all the time….which was probably because I was so ill.  This is why I think schizophrenics would not naturally hurt people in a really detrimental way, if they feel anything like I did.  I may have felt helpless and alone and scared or fearful for myself and for others, but this made me realise how lovely people were to help me through it and that unconditional support from my friends and mostly family gave me strength to carry on through it.  I now believe it made me the person I am today in a wacky kind of fun way.  I have an open mind which is always open to new experiences and this was a really amazing experience to have gone through and be lucky enough to have.  I know you may not see it this way, and think I am just saying it to dress it up……but I really believe it.  Like my psychiatrist said I have experienced stuff that most other people would pay loads for in drugs to have experienced!  I am lucky I did it clean.  I never needed anything to get these things and because of that they were intense experiences.

Lost across the abyss

The moon smiles,

How am I meant to pass the test

If I don’t know the rules?

“You make up the rules”

If I make up the rules

It’s hardly a test!

 

The black horse snorts abruptly,

The baby cries bitterly,

Time is runing out,

No path to be seen, No guide to follow

Wandering blindly through the thicket

It’s too dark to see!

“You must use other senses”

Stop laughing at me!

 

A hundered hearts beating

A hundered hearts beating in your chest

Don’t stand on a lie in the dark.

Into the realms of the unknown

First thing is first……I got ill as you know at 19 and this consisted of many hallucinations, mainly of spirits of people (as tiny specks that glowed very brightly) these are more than just ‘seeing stars’ because they are larger than when you see stars after hitting your head!  They are about 1mm in size, glow in all different colours like purple, blue, red……then don’t ask me how I did this(!!!!) but if you looked at them with a ‘magic eye’ which is in your eye anyway, but not always in use (I think) then you see them as little characters in cartoon-ish form.  These spirits were also what I saw when I was watching the evil eye I mentioned earlier.  The idea which I couldn’t do and got kinda told off for, was to collect a spirit you liked the look of with an extension of some kind of long grasping (quite uncontrollable- for me anyway) thing that resides inside your head.  This snake-like thing had to come out of your ear, grasp the spirit, then you would hold it over your heart to see if it liked your spirit.  A number of things may happen then, either it would melt (?) or it would jump up and down, or it would die (ooops).  So if it seemed to like you then you could attempt to put it into your heart.  This was where I found it really difficult to control as my snake thing that never would do what I thought and it made me eat it! another oops!  Obviously I was dead embarrassed about that and it must appear like I am some ogre eating children!  (the whispers I got from somewhere were ‘that’s bad, Aliens’),  but it was so impossible to control. 

Then I was condemned to a dark place (it felt like the moon)  where I was part of a foot and another thing was sweeping up spirits.  I had to open my large toe (in this large foot- which was not in my foot at all but made of people) while someone else swept the spirits into the toe????  I know this doesn’t make any sense.  But for some reason I wasn’t able to do this correctly and I was made into a god or demi- god to get spirits to jump into me instead….this is no god complex I assure you, but at the time all these things were family hand-me-downs as my Dad was God (at the time, I was led to believe) and these were tactics that my family have used for centuries.  So I was a god type figure with my hand up which would catch the spirits.  I said in my mind that this was pretty boring and I received an angry reply ‘well you press the cloth then’ (which seemed to come from my Mum) which was regarding a drape I had of a god-like figure.  Then I was put in the naughty corner where I had to hide my head from God by bowing to god and hiding the contents of my head with a small cover like thing which came from the back of my neck.  I couldn’t control this either, much like all the other things, so all the spirits disappeared from my head.  For some reason this was a bad thing…..so I was put lying down in the dark next to some very large spiders that would sit there looking horrible and like they were about to eat me at any moment.  They were glowing as well, like the spirits, with huge hairy legs and the many eyes focused on me.  Luckily I felt a little safe as there was some kind of glass between me and them.  Then I lay on my back and I looked next to me and saw my boyfriend (at the time) kiss the air as if to me, but not at me.  Weirdly enough I had seen him do this when we were together but this was now 2 weeks ago.  I had been lying in bed not being able to sleep and he was asleep (I think) and he kissed the air.  I had seen this and got quite angry, not knowing why he had done this……But now I saw it myself in this state of mind it was comforting, as he wasn’t really with me at the time. 

So by this stage it had been about 5 hours as this was the time it took to transfer me from Uni back home.  I got home and I couldn’t sleep.  I had a mans voice in my head talking slowly like a hypnotist and a women’s voice talking crazily which I didn’t want to listen to, so I concentrated on the mans voice which was soothing.  Simultaneously there was a ticking of a grandfather clock.  Luckily I managed to sleep during this.  I woke in the middle of the night however to thick strands of string-like substance travelling up my legs and through my body towards my head……and it really hurt!  I didn’t know what to do and so stumbled into my parents room and muttered ‘It hurts’ to my Mum, who replied it didn’t hurt and that I had to get some sleep. So that is one day of delusions, probably many I have missed out as I am trying to remember them from a long time ago now. 

The crazy thing about it was that it was a whole new reality, this hallucinatory world was in existence as far as I was concerned and although I couldn’t tell if others could see it too, I just assumed they could because it was so obvious to me.  I was stuck in limbo between two worlds colliding that totally contradicted each other.  In this way I could not communicate unless what I said belonged to both worlds at the same time, which you can imagine was nearly impossible, so I ended up mute.  I was unable to voice my concerns, my fears, my need for help and thus these things went on and on until my parents decided there was something very wrong with my behaviour and I needed more help.

The real story about schizophrenia and psychosis.

Hello everyone,  Sorry to blurb on about EAP on my first blog, but I didn’t want to scare everyone off straight away.  I needed to show I was a sane person first, before I disclose what purpose I am really blogging for.  I have schizophrenia and bi-polar…..it is not something I suffer from any more, I have had 4 relapses since I was 19 yrs old and they lasted anything from 6 to 9 months each.  I have been stable now for 4 years.  I want to share some of the strange things I experienced, I am not sure how this will help, but I really want to show that people can be really bad and yet get well and survive afterwards given good support and the correct medication and also some sheer determination.  I don’t know whether people really understand mental illness, I never did before.  I sure as hell never thought it would happen to me.  When it did I still didn’t believe it was what it was, I thought the whole world was going mad!!!  ‘It not me it’s them’ were the thoughts I had, everyone else seemed so weird.

I didn’t seem the kind of candidate for mental illness….I had a good upbringing with great parents, privileged life as a child and teen-ager. My parents were well balanced communicated to me well and I grew up well-rounded. 

The things that made me ill were probably an accumulation of factors, at 19 I was in my first serious relationship with a guy that was manipulative and could get physical.  I loved him so intensely though, the mixture of emotions that he made me feel simultaneously were so overpowering it almost bound me to him, it was like a double-bubble.  That with the stress of exams in Uni probably broke me down gradually. 

I remember before I went to Uni I had a slight episode, I was sitting in my room alone when I heard a voice in my head  saying he was going to explain about my life.  He said he would show me my nightmares of when I was a young child to prove what he was going to say was true…..which I confirmed.  He went on to say I was at a cross-roads in my life and that I would meet  my true love.  He said I would move in with 7 people at University (this actually did happen when I went to Uni a year later) and I would be guided by my visions, premonitions and deja vu’s.  He said I had to be very careful otherwise I would end up in an institution having hallucinations all my life.  He elucidated that the nightmares I had as a child were the hallucinations I had as an adult in my last life and that this would be a vicious circle if I did not take great care.  The voice explained I had to live this life right as this was my last life.  I live by this to this day…… So that was a somewhat smooth introduction into the other realm of reality that I soon became very accustomed to.

When I began to feel ill  I was feeling out of balance inside, like my inner awareness was off-key, that my body was floating inside my body not in the body parts…..It’s hard to explain!  So the first things that happened was the noises began to communicate with me.  Light switches on and off (the sound) meant something and everything had such weight.  Meaning was so great it made me cry lots of the time.  The birds were the worst!!!  They taunted and harassed me teased me about personal things that really hit a nerve.  There is the element of being exposed totally without any way of protection, you feel naked and feel like dying in a hole out of shame.  Telepathy seemed to occur and this really freaks you out.  You can hear the thoughts of other people (but your still unsure whether they really are thoughts or your mind making it up) and you feel like you are broadcasting your thoughts as well……I was in a lift when I heard a young girl’s thought voice say ‘why is she so sad?’  I think that’s what she said, can’t really remember.  The voices (the classic sign of schizophrenia) it starts off with uncontrollable thoughts like the  most embarrassing things you can think of to say to someone that pop into your head and usually make you blush, or feel down right uncomfortable.  Things you would usually not even think of, they’re so lame and naff and stupid but because they are of this nature it is embarrassing to think they come from you.  You feel like a child again, vulnerable because you feel exposed due to the telepathy.  The voices add another layer to it, making you feel paranoid, as they judge your every move, talk about you in 3rd person all the time in a derogatory way.  They make you angry feed your mind with irrational ideas because of their taunting and make you emotional in an irrational way.  I heard the voices of my best friend and my boyfriend (at the time) having sex, so naturally I got really angry and I drove to his place and shouted at him for sleeping with her.  He was gob smacked and didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.  Everything is so highly strung, emotionally volatile and you live on tender hooks as to what is coming next. 

The other things I would like to mention are still a bit scary for me to mention today.  Like being on the moon, seeing spirits of people, horses and people in my veins and in my head.  Falling down in my head into hell and needing to get to the top of my head which is meant to be heaven but really is worse.  The devil that flies into you head and whispers into your ear to make you spill secrets each night.  The army of christ marching across my chest.  The millions of small stick people that circled my head in an orbit and fell on the floor.  The hallucinations of different realities through some glass the mushroom world, the stoned world and the natural world.  The clouds all laughing at me because I did it wrong (again) and people generally always laughing at me.  I felt so small, I felt so stupid, I felt so lost, so alone, so not here not there, not anywhere. 

For some reason though there everything was so meaningful.  Like every little thing a thought, a word said an action, a small gesture or a micro emotion seemed to have great meaning in a spiritual context.  Like there was a test to pass, there is a chasm to jump over, or (my favourite) the abyss to cross.  But you don’t know which side you’ll land on.  You know you are half way there between this reality and the unreal reality, but you can’t tell which direction you are going in.  It is so weird, so surreal.  But I guess everyone is a little mad?  I think everyone experiences a little of this?  I wouldnt know this is what I experienced in a nut shell.  I had a feeling it was something to do with growing up and that the reason I was having these hallucinations and weird things happening to me was because I refused to grow up – which caused friction with the ‘others’ and they were all laughing at me.  Other secrets of the universe were whispered to me unconsciously all too deep and personal to put on here and unfortunately though these actually aren’t delusional they are more frightening to me than anything else because of the element of truth held in them, which I don’t want to face…..which is bad I know but I am scared of growing up in  way I am scared of crossing over the abyss and I am scared of all the secrets that were given to me.  Just so you know the topics covered….they were about the difference between men and women and sex and god, I can’t remember any more at the moment.

I did some remote viewing as well, where I was semi conscious and in another person (someone I didn’t know usually) and I could feel myself existing as a small thing in their head, but I could also feel what it was like to be the other person, to experience their emotions, their physical sensations, etc…..it was quite fun.  Then other times I felt like I had a sense I was in a fish bowl or something and a lady (mother) and son were talking about me as I were a fish.  Yes weird! So I was trying to pretend I was a fish!!! But I couldn’t see them or my bowl, I just felt the presence of water and heard their voices.  That was a delusion I was dying to get out of!  Then I was in the back of my head and on a stage and I had to do something like an act…..some puppet or doll.  I saw the evil eye, shining back and forth over many spirits of people, on a tower type thing….whenever it shone on them the spirits of the people would jump up and down as if having a party, and when they were in darkness they would be dead….but the eye shone like a light house, only in 2 directions not just rotational so there wasn’t much time that they were dead.

So there is a bit of what I went through in small detail.  I don’t know what anyone will think of this.  If it sheds some light on what they know about other people with mental illness?  Or even if you are suffering yourself?  I would like share these things because I felt like I was totally on my own.  In fact it was one of the best things to go to hospital because I saw other people that were experiencing similar things, though you could never really tell what.  The bad thing about hospital was that the more people you are with that are insane you go more insane…..You need to be around normal people to try and keep a grip on reality.  I will go into that another time, for now I think this is enough to digest!  Thanks for reading.

Hello world! Into the depths of equine psychotherapy.

Hi everyone,

I am a training psychtherapist learning with the NHS at the moment to do my training.  I have great interest in the mind and the abnomalites of it.  I am not qulifying until 2 yrs time unfortunately.  My main aim is to start my own equine pschotherapy establishment where we shall use horses as a way of helping the client, much like hippotherapy, but most of the work is on the ground and it is nothing to do with movment of the horse.  Equine Psychotherapy is where the horse ‘mirrors’ the client and so will show how the client is feeling through its own body language.  Horses are specifically used because they are perceptive to their environment (due to them being prey animals) they are always ready for fight or flight.  Horses are also herd animals (social like us) where they feel comfort and can connect together when under stress (Mandrell, 2006).  Horses are good at relationships finding a healthy balance between independance and cohesion with others, which is something all people can benefit from.  The horse will build a relationship up with someone by there present behaviours and responses to them rather than past expectations or experiences (Mandell,2006).  Being experts at non-verbal communication, also the horse can determine our authenticity and sincerity.  For those of you who are fimiliar to horse shall recognise and understand the power of the horse and what impact they have on us as people and our relationships (Mandrell, 2006).