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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Elyn R. Saks
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April 1 - April 2, 2023
Soon, some of the beliefs that had begun at the Warneford (for example, that beings in the sky controlled my thoughts and were poised to hurt me) took center stage in my thinking again.
Psychosis
Me: “They’re messing with fetuses. They think it’s us whereas the truth is God. Voices went, tabernacle, out to the edge of time. Time. Time is too low. Lower the boom. The TV is making fun of me. The characters are laughing at me. They think I am a failure and deserve to suffer. Everyone watching knows. The TV is telling the story of my life.”
Psychosis
Mrs. Jones: “Tell me about your difficulties at university.” Me: “I’m not smart enough. I can’t do the work.” Mrs. Jones: “You were first in your class at Vanderbilt. Now you’re upset about Oxford because you want to be the best and are afraid you can’t be. You feel like you are a piece of shit from your mother’s bottom.” Me: “I’m closing the curtains from now on because people across the street are looking at me. They can hear what I’m saying. They are angry. They want to hurt me.” Mrs. Jones: “You are evacuating your angry and hostile feelings onto those people. It is you who are angry and
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To her, my thoughts and feelings were not right or wrong, good or bad; they just were.
course, I had, and I knew it. Got to keep control, I thought. Get a grip. Keep a grip. In spite of my occasional lapse, these three dear friends made me happy, when for so long, nothing much had. They filled a place in my heart that needed filling; it was just like Kenny and Margie and Pat all over again—a small group of friends, laughing together, studying together, sharing a life that was focused on (indeed, held together by) our books, and our deadlines, and an emphasis on intellectual rigor. If I could make friends like these, I thought, then I could find a way to save myself. Despite
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“I know you say you are my analyst,” I snarled at her one afternoon. “But I also know the truth. You are an evil monster, perhaps the devil. I
Psychosis
won’t let you kill me. You are evil, a witch. I’ll fight.”
Psychosis
Psychotic people who are paranoid do scary things because they are scared.
For a while, I carried a serrated kitchen knife and a box cutter in my purse to my sessions—just in case. She is evil and she is dangerous. She keeps killing me. She is a monster. I must kill her, or threaten her, to stop her from doing evil things to me. It will be a blessing for all the other people she is hurting.
Psychosis
will kidnap her and keep her tied up in my closet. I will take good care of her. I will give her food and clothes. She will always be there when I need her to give me psychoanalysis.
Psychosis
Me: “I will not let you go on vacation this
year. I have a weapon. I will take you to my room and put you in my closet. You will stay with me. You will not have a choice. I won’t let you go. Throw. So.”
Psychosis
Her tolerance and understanding seemed endless, and her steady and calm presence contained me, as if she were the glue that held me together. I was falling apart, flying apart, exploding—and she gathered my pieces and held them for me.
At times, though, I was so psychotic that I could barely contain myself. The delusions expanded into full-blown hallucinations, in which I could clearly hear people whispering.
My brother experienced this before he completed suicide
For two straight years, I did my work, met my obligations, made it through the day as best I could, and then fled to Mrs. Jones, where I promptly took the chains off my mind and fell apart.
Well, now, this is pretty interesting, I thought. If I fear dying so much, maybe that means that I don’t want to die anymore. Maybe it means that I actually want to stay
Yes! I found my way! I want to stay!
alive, and find out what happens next.
what could anyone know of the fantasies I had? Or the demons that I wrestled with in the night, and the way I needed to grit my teeth together during the day in order to summon the simplest pleasantries of excuse me and thank you
and I beg your pardon? Please, Mrs. Jones. Please, please. Occasionally, I received a letter back from her, measured and kind and cautionary in tone—recognizing most probably that we needed to keep a certain boundary, because we were no longer in an analytic relationship. I was profoundly relieved each time she wrote; it meant that she wasn’t dead, and that I wasn’t, either, at least in her mind. Her words attempted to soothe me, acknowledging that I was having a hard time in this transition, and that she wished it would all be better soon. She knew I missed her. Steady on, and all would be
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Psychosis
once I had no time to write her, there was no place for the craziness to go, and the pressure slowly began to build. In addition, I wasn’t in any sort of treatment or therapy, or taking any kind of medication. There were plenty of indications that I should do something—talk to somebody, take some kind of pill. I knew that much; I was not, after all, stupid. But
She’s looking after me. She’s God. She has the power to make everything all right for me. She knows about the killings and wants to help. I won’t let her kill me, though. She wants to help me. She’ll take care of me. She has the power because she’s God. I will bask in her God-like glow.
Psychosis
And always, my head hurt from thinking these things—a pounding, searing, real pain, not like the physical pain of a headache, but an intense throbbing inside my skull someplace; sound waves. There were days that I feared that my brain was actually heating up and might explode. I visualized brain matter flying all over the room, spattering the walls. Whenever I sat at a desk and tried to read, I caught myself putting my hands up to either side of my head, trying to hold it all in.
Psychosis
“Well, er, now then, Elyn,” she began, looking first at her notebook, then back at me. “I think you’re having some psychological difficulties. There’s a word called ‘delusion,’ which refers to a fixed and false belief that’s not based on evidence. This appears to be what is going on with you.”
I became especially concerned with who might get hurt if my head literally were to explode. The innocent bystander problem.
Psychosis
quickly decided that I needed to conduct my end of our conversation from inside her small coat closet. I stood up and walked over to it, then squeezed myself in. She wasn’t having any of it. “If you don’t come out now and talk with me, Elyn, I’m going to have to hospitalize you.”
knew exactly what a neuroleptic was—antipsychotic medication, with terrible
side effects, like heavy sedation, arms or legs that won’t stop trembling (sometimes irreversibly), and a worst-case scenario that included death. There was no way I was going to take their stupid drug. Why should I take a drug, when all I’m doing is saying what other people think but for some reason don’t say? We all think like this, our brains are all like this; it’s not as though I’m psychotic or something. Did I say this out loud? I wasn’t sure.
At least you’re not in the hospital. That was a close call.
I was going to the hospital for the third time, I knew it. I was going to be an inpatient again, and they would make me take drugs. Every nerve in my body was screaming. I didn’t want a hospital. I didn’t want drugs. I just wanted help.
“People are controlling me, they’re putting thoughts into my head,” I told him. “I can’t resist them. They’re doing it to me. I’ll have to kill them. Are you controlling me? They’re making me walk around your office. I give life and I take it away.”
Psychosis
Perhaps she and Pritzer are working together on my case. Are they married? Perhaps there’s something sinister. That’s it, it’s an experiment! Contracts teacher works with psychologist. They have a contract on my life. Experimental therapy with messages sent via contracts cases.
Psychosis
“I’ve killed people and I will kill again,” I announced. I was almost growling at him. “Who else is in the office with us? Are you human?” I walked over to a big, leafy plant in the corner and snapped off one of its leaves. “See? This is what I can do to people!” “You should not have done that, Elyn,” Dr. Pritzer said sternly. “I like that plant. You are not to do that again.”
“Memos are visitations,” I informed them. “They make certain points. The point is on your head. Pat used to say that. Have you ever killed anyone?”
Rebel and Val looked at me as if they, or I, had just been splashed with ice water. “A joke, right?” quipped one. “What are you talking about, Elyn?” “Oh, the usual. You know. Heaven and hell. Who’s what, what’s who. Hey!” I said, leaping out of my chair. “Let’s all go out on the roof. It’s OK. It’s safe.” I hurried to the nearest large window, opened it, then climbed through and stepped out onto the roof, a flat surface and not at all scary. A few moments later, Rebel and Val followed me. “Course, the police may see us and bring in a SWAT team,” I said, laughing. “Can’t you just imagine?
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Psychosis
“This is the real me,” I announced, waving my arms above my head. And then, late on a Friday night, on the roof of the Yale Law School Library, I began to sing, and not quietly, either. “Come to the Florida sunshine bush. Do you want to dance?” The smiles quickly faded from their faces. “Are you on drugs?” one asked. “Are you high?” “High? Me? No way. No drugs! Come on, let’s dance! Come to the Florida sunshine bush. Where they make lemons. Where there are demons. Is anyone else out here with us? Hey, wait a minute, what’s the matter with you guys? Where are you going?” Rebel and Val had
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Psychosis
I couldn’t settle down. I couldn’t sleep. My head was too full of noise.
Being bipolar, I have racing thoughts. It makes it hard to sleep sometimes. It feels like my brain won’t shut down and is running 100 mph.
matter how crazy it sounded—that was how analysis worked. That was the point. Otherwise, how would she know what was going on inside me? But the people at MU10 didn’t want to know. If they couldn’t tolerate what was in my head, why were any of them in this business? When my scrambled thinking revealed itself, they put me in the hospital version of “time out.” Where was the “treatment” in this? Were they wanting to help me get better, or did they just want me to be socially appropriate? Overall, the sole message they seemed to want me to get was “behave yourself!” This is a classic bind for
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In reading everything about mental illness that I could get my hands on, I wasn’t looking for a diagnosis per se as much as I was looking for an explanation for my behavior, which obviously wasn’t acceptable. I thought that if I could figure it out, I could conquer it. My problem was not that I was crazy; it was that I was weak.
For the rest of my life. The rest of my life. It felt more like a death sentence than a medical diagnosis.
I can relate! I am doing well on meds and went through CBT-stable for 9 years.
More current theories about the origins of schizophrenia discount or even refute entirely the family-transmission view, focusing instead on the patient’s brain chemistry. The rapid expansion of research into the workings of the human genome has helped shift the focus to a genetic predisposition for the disease. As with many families, there is serious mental illness in my extended family as well.
Schizophrenia runs in my family.
my experience of the houses giving me frightening messages on that long walk home from school was a very loud preview of coming attractions. But the length of time between the beginning of the disease and its diagnosis (and treatment) can range from mere weeks to several years, as it had for me.
It took 42 years for me!
I wasn’t diagnosed early; I wasn’t treated early. I stumbled around in the dark for years, clutching my Aristotle and negotiating my life as best I could, until I was blessed by the wisdom and guidance of Mrs. Jones, and given reason to hope in the future. But with Dr. Kerrigan’s announcement, those
days had officially come to an end.
I wasn’t diagnosed early either!
Years of this illness had taken a toll. The constant effort to keep reality on one side and delusions on the other was exhausting, and I often felt beaten down, knowing that the schizophrenia diagnosis had ended any hope I’d had of a miracle cure or a miracle fix.
I can relate to these statements but substitute bipolar disorder in place of schizophrenia.
I resented my dad for setting up a standard that I might not be able to meet, yet his opinion meant everything to me—and he believed I could beat this.
felt like a fraud. Piling a lie on top of a secret didn’t feel particularly good, but mental illness comes with a price tag—and I was willing to pay it.
Different bodies respond differently to different medication; finding the magic potion is pretty much hit-and-miss. This seems obvious, even simplistic, but it’s the only consistently true fact in treating mental illness. This time, Navane worked. I stayed on it for
about ten days, got a lot of work done, then decided that while it was helpful, it was making me a little druggy, and besides, it probably wasn’t necessary. I’ll take it when I get sick, but not for long; I don’t want to be drugged. Within two days, I’d stopped altogether. I’d fooled them. Which of course raises the question: Fooled whom?
I take an antidepressant and mood stabilizer
One of the worst aspects of schizophrenia is the profound isolation—the constant awareness that you’re different, some sort of alien, not really human. Other people have flesh and bones, and insides made of organs and healthy living tissue. You are only a machine, with insides made of metal. Medication and talk therapy allay this terrible feeling, but friendship can be as powerful as either.
Psychiatric patients always have someone (or a whole chorus of someones) telling them what they’re supposed to do. In my own experience, I had discovered that it was much more effective to be asked what I’d like, e.g., “If you could arrange things your way, what would that look like and how do you think we could help you get there?”
