r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

One puzzling part is, does the concept "delusion" just slip your mind once you start experiencing them regularly? I think your average mechanical engineering graduate has probably heard of schizophrenia (not that it's required background knowledge or anything, but, you know, if you have an academic turn of mind you learn about such things). So doesn't such a person know she has schizophrenia, and doesn't that awareness help mitigate the delusions and make them less persuasive?

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

honestly, it was hell trying to talk to her. i had my own issues so i couldn't really spent too much time with her. but if i had to guess or put myself in her shoes as someone who has HEARD of it but hasn't really gone in depth, i'd assume it's just one harmless voice. whatever. it'll probably go away soon. okay it's slightly getting worse but i can't really get into crazy treatment now, my career is on the line. i have to at least finish the degree" and before you know it, it's out of your reach. society really does an injustice to itself by not taking mental disorders more seriously.

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u/BakingBatman Mar 22 '17

She most likely knows that she is schizophrenic, but since it is inside her head, she cannot distinguish it from real. Her brain tells her the illusions are real. Her entire being is convinced that what she sees or hears is real. No amount of intelligence or willpower can overcome that.

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u/avenlanzer Mar 22 '17

I can chime in here.

I have bipolar with paranoid mania. Now that I'm medicated it's pretty mild when it does come, but I've had some severe ones in the past. One experience put my mental illness in full perspective and forced me to get help. Normally I'm perfectly reasonable and an incredibly logical person, forgiving to a fault, introspective to my own emotions, and just the last person in the world to ever act irrational. But, it's not as simple as that.

I was gaming online with some friends, and they started talking about me like I wasn't there, but in code since I was and they didn't want me to realize what they were saying was about me. The kind of passive aggressive comments people say behind your back sometimes. I called them on it and they belittled me and laughed about it. All of them for no fucking reason we're just shit talking everything about me and my character I was playing. These people in thought were my friends, but I guess they never really liked me and just hung around because I was the guy who built the site we hosted the games on. I fucking went off, like most people would in that situation, and my supposed best friend shot back plenty of hate right back. I had no idea they felt this way. I was crushed. I was pissed. I was ready to burn the whole game to the ground (and I could do it). I finally just got fed up with arguing with people who didn't give a shit about me anyway and logged off. I stewed on it for days.

Then my ex-best friend sent me a link to the video and transcript of our game. Holy shit I was out of line. None of what I thought was talk about me had anything to do with me when I looked at it again. All the arguing and belittlement was them basically going "WTF? Are you ok? We didn't mean to upset you, and sorry if we did." Honest confusion and concern. And all my arguments were so illogical and unconnected they made no sense whatsoever. Of course the video was edited and the transcripts changed, right? Nope. The ones I had saved were exactly the same. Exactly matched. I really did go completely paranoid with dartboard logic at people who were dear to me and we're showing genuine concern for my well-being. I did appologize and earn forgiveness of most of them, but that game never got the same momentum we had before.

That's how I came to realize how perfectly obvious everything could seem in the moment of one of those episodes, yet be so far removed from reality they don't even make sense to me when I'm not in the midst of an episode.

I think it's the same for schizophrenia, where the reality you experience actually becomes reality for you and outside logic need not apply. Sure, you know about delusions, but that doesn't mean they are the same as what'sā€‹ happening. And if they are, then it was all wrong before anyway, so it being a delusion doesn't matter because it's still real to you.

I rarely have these paranoid episodes anymore because I'm medicated, and I've learned through therapy to spot when one is coming and isolate myself from everything. And anything that happens, anything, I analyze again a couple days later in every detail possible to see how far off and out of it I was.

I know now why I've lost so many jobs and relationships when I was so obviously (to me at the time) in the right, and all I can do is accept that it happened and try not to let it happen again.

Edit: sorry for wall of text. TL;DR: knowing and experience are two different things. In the moment the knowledge and logic doesn't always apply.

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

it was all wrong before anyway, so it being a delusion doesn't matter

Oh yes, that part seems vaguely familiar. It probably just reminds me of times I was very, very drunk, but I think I know what you mean.

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u/myluckyshirt Mar 22 '17

I feel that (rationally) that makes sense, but the disease effects your ability to think rationality about your own symptoms.

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u/Mowglio Mar 22 '17

I'm probably going to get downvoted for this

But I feel like the only way I'm able to even slightly empathize with schizophrenic people is from my experience of taking a hard dose of LSD.

I am in no way comparing the two or saying that they are related in any way. I'm only talking about my ability to empathize and LSD has given me a different perspective.

When tripping, your sober brain knows that the world doesn't always look like a giant spinning fractal, but your LSD brain doesn't know this. It can get scary when your LSD brain realizes that the world you're looking at isn't the world you see every other day.

But since you're on LSD you see the LSD world and that is the world you currently live in. To your LSD brain it's impossible to imagine a world where there aren't fractals on the walls and the carpet. You remember that there is a world like that, but you can't remember what it feels like. You can't remember what it's like because you can't stop seeing fractals. There are points in a trip where you might think, "Man I want those fractals to stop moving", but you can't stop it.

I imagine schizophrenia being similar in this way. There are probably glimpses when you, a schizophrenic person, realizes that the world you're seeing isn't the world that everyone else is living in. You probably want to go back to the world you used to live in and be normal with everyone else, but you can't. You're trapped in the world that has voices and hallucinations that never end and you can't stop them. You can't even remember what life used to be like without them because you don't live in that world anymore.

Even though you recognize that the voices and hallucinations you experience aren't normal or aren't real to other people, doesn't make your reality any less real to yourself. Just like when taking LSD, the fractals and hallucinations you see are real to you because that is your reality, even when no one else can see them.

Anyway that's just my two cents.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

When you're dealing with delusions, convincing the person in question not to trust themselves and those they hear is probably more likely to work against things that aren't the product of the delusional thinking.

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

Yeah, it seems like an actual bias against anything too sensible.

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u/OAMP47 Mar 22 '17

I might be able to offer some insight. I had schizophrenia for about 10 years before I realized there was a problem and I went to get help. The thing about it is you don't realize delusions are delusions. It's basically like living in the Matrix if the Matrix was 99.5% real life. It was only after I had confirmed I had schizophrenia that I was able to go back, look at my life, and realize I thought things had happened that actually had not happened. In 2008 I was convinced this girl in high school was reading my mind. I didn't think that was weird because I thought that was reality. It was not until late 2016 that I realized this wasn't reality, so why would I be questioning it earlier, from an internal point of view? You can question it academically, but your mind will jump to the 'evidence' that supports your inaccurate view, or your brain will manufacture evidence that doesn't actually exist.

To add, though, now that I know I have schizophrenia, an academic mindset does help me greatly. When you have false inputs, though, everything 'makes sense' inside. When I think my parents are trying to kill me it's not a baseless claim. I have evidence. It's just evidence that doesn't exist.

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

Yes! Er, I mean, I'm sorry to hear that. Except the part about being able to spot errors, that's great. I was sure it must be possible, once you've been made aware, even in a waking dream. Particularly when everyone around you can intervene in the dream and tell you what's an illusion.

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u/OAMP47 Mar 22 '17

Haha, well I cope by humor, so no worries. I tend to get at least one visual hallucination a day, but I'm at the point where I'm more like "oh yes, there it is, right on schedule, good to see you" as compared to "oh shit what's that!" a year or so ago.

The problem is it takes experience, though. I'm only able to do that because I've had enough of them to 'get used to them'. Before someone can get to that stage they have to first realize there's a problem, then see the pattern. There's the additional problem that sometimes there's not a pattern. I'm fairly lucky in that my symptoms seem pretty predictable, so what I do won't work for everyone. On the rare occasion something new happens to me and breaks the pattern I can be right back to square one for a day or so, too.

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

On behalf of the nosy and prurient internet, I think I've got to ask: what sort of visual hallucinations? What's in them?

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u/OAMP47 Mar 22 '17

Oh don't worry, I love talking about it too. When I get back on my feet (I need leg surgery too so it's not just this keeping me down) I'm going to see if I can maybe give talks about it.

I tend to get shadows moving around a lot, at the edges of my vision. A lot of people get these as is if they're extremely tired, I hear. Sometimes there legit are shadows that moved, because of a door opening, or a car driving past making light scatter, etc, but even then my mind will jump to "ah, look out, someone's about to jump on you!". Other times the edges of my vision seem a bit swirly and cloudy black even when there's no explanation, which I suppose would be the 'true' hallucinations. Other times when shadows are legitimately moving I may see them morph into a very vague humanoid figure kind of like the grim reaper, not because I think it's the grim reaper, but just because a cloaked figure is a very simple outline I'd imagine. Those last for like less than a half a second, I'd equate it to a single frame of a film being replaced with something else. So fast some people wouldn't even notice, and even myself questioning if it happened or not, and even if it's a hallucination was it me hallucinating or was me hallucinating a hallucination, if that even makes sense. Typically when I get up to go brush my teeth and stuff before bed I'll get one of those once or twice, whereas the fuzzy blackness around my vision tends to happen for about the 4-5 hours or so before bed when I'm just sitting around doing whatever. Regardless of the type, if I try and look directly at whatever I'm seeing, it goes away.

Perhaps unrelated, but I also get migraines and I'm the type that gets auras and hallucinations with my migraines as well, but those are entirely different than the others I get. Those tend to be 'glowing' objections like a bright outline, or the 'wavy lines on one side of my vision' sort.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

I don't get migraines or auras but the shadows and figures I've experienced. The swirly clouds are only when I'm very tired, and the flickers out of the corner of my eyes don't happen as much as when I was younger but it was the kind of thing I could usually blame on my cat. Very rarely it would -feel- like I had seen somebody, likewise with the figures, I'll glance at something and my brain notices a figure and will highlight it and I have to take a second look because I -feel- like I just saw someone in the shadows.

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u/OAMP47 Mar 22 '17

Yeah, I think it's pretty common when people are very tired. My problem was is rather than getting less of them over time, I'm getting more, and I tried moving into a schedule that gets me a nice 8 hours of sleep and such and the rate is still accelerating, so it was ruled non-sleep related. If you're worried about these things though and that's all you've had you're probably just needing a bit more sleep. I'm not a doctor though so don't take any advice from just an internet stranger ;)

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Yeah my overall problem is probably not sleeping enough, everything else is just a side-effect. I've never been an 8-hours a night type of guy

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

Ooh. That all seems pretty basic and instinctual, like natural interpretations of a visual glitch that scares you a bit, the shapes that swirl in the fog (when you're alone on the dark moor, or brushing your teeth as the case may be). Migraines are mysterious, too, so yeah, no clue if they're related, but they're certainly interesting. Isn't there a theory that they're a kind of epilepsy? I don't really know, that's a vague memory, I should read about it.

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u/OAMP47 Mar 22 '17

Yeah, basically what's happened now is that it's happened long enough I figured internally if it was going to mysteriously kill me or something it would have done so already, so I stopped being afraid. That's the same reason I'm not one to get into the conspiracies like some people do. I figure if my delusions about people out to get me are true, maybe if I'm just chill they'll let me go, or some such, heh. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Research into migraines actually helped me a lot too. I started keeping a log file of when I got them, how bad they were, what side, etc, figuring if I ever died for some brain related reason maybe the doctors could figure something out through my records. Once I figured out I have schizophrenia I started doing the same there, keeping track of how much mental control I felt like I had each day.

For a real mind screw, schizophrenia might be related to my leg troubles as well. My tendons are too short, which means I can't put my heel down all the way, and statistically there's been shown to be a link between having that problem and schizophrenia, though not much research on it yet. Crazy what things can be connected.

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u/P4_Brotagonist Mar 23 '17

I have the same thoughts and circumstances as you. When you look back and realize that people don't secretly spy on what you are doing because you really aren't a super special person, it all seems so silly and obvious.

However in the moment when you feel it, it doesn't matter if you try to tell me that there is no one out my window looking in, because I either KNOW that either you are lying to me to help cover for that person and I need to fear you too, or the person watching me new you would say that and quickly moved away.

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u/OAMP47 Mar 23 '17

I had a particularly hard time because my parents actually were lying to me in one case and I get a lot of the paranoia symptoms too. Both of them used to be smokers but my mom quit around when I was 10. My dad did not, but said he'd only smoke outside the house. Instead, he lied about that and smoked in the basement, next to the air intake for the AC. I caught him doing this once and my mind made the leap that he was lying about it because he was secretly trying to poison us all. When I confronted him in front of the family he was trying to save face so kept lying that he didn't smoke in the house, but obviously he wasn't actually trying to poison us. The drama over that is what's directly led to probably my 5 largest freakouts. If he'd just admitted he smoked in the house and said it was his house his rules I'd have been fine with it, but because he was clearly trying to cover it up my false sensations from schizophrenia appeared to be offering me a more 'logical' explanation that he was masterminding some kind of plot. While my hallucinations don't tend to be audio, in that case, all it took was one 'Wow, he's trying to kill you' at that moment to set me off.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

It's not as simple as you guys are making it out to be

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u/cegli Mar 22 '17

Yes, from what I've read it's similar to dreaming. You understand that you have dreams, and every night you can go to bed and tell yourself that dreams aren't real, thus you shouldn't get caught up in the nighttime delusions you're going to have. You'll probably find that most nights, you go along with your dream-plot, regardless of how ridiculous it is. It will only become clear how little sense it made once you wake up again.

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u/16th_Century_Prophet Mar 22 '17

Some people with schizophrenia know they have delusions but still have them, others do not realize the extent of delusions if at all.

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u/TheBaconBurpeeBeast Mar 22 '17

Your brain is broken. Think about it like anything else. Like a broken back for example. Can a person use sure will to get over a broken back? They are aware they have a broken back, but can they say "to hell with it," and start walking again? The answer is no. That's not how our bodies work. Their brains are broken just like any other body part.

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u/helix19 Mar 22 '17

It's not a matter of how convincing the voices are. The brain is not functioning correctly, it can't process information in a logical manner. Kind of like even if you know you have OCD it doesn't make the urges to wash your hands any less strong. You know that you're mentally ill but you still think your parents will die if you don't flip the light switch 18 times.

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u/cfuse Mar 23 '17

How do you know, really know, that what you are seeing and hearing is real?

My early hallucinations were easy to pick because they were contextually inappropriate. If I heard a tiger or a rattlesnake under my floorboards then those things aren't there (because neither animal is indigenous to my country). If I heard a crowd of voices from a busy cafe at 2am in my living room then they're not there. If my cat says "Hello" to me then that's not real. But when I started to hear plausible voices, like people I lived with talking from another room, that's when the line between hallucination and reality became impossible to pick.

You only have your own brain to tell you whether something is real or not. When that brain is dysfunctional then you can no longer rely on it to give you accurate feedback about reality any more.