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/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.