jan 13 2016

[prismaticbleed]

So the brother went to therapy last night, at long last.
Turns out, yes, he has schizophrenia.

He came home in a better mood than we've seen him in in ages-- not "better" as in "happy." but as in "relieved?" Like he had a sort of "ah, yes, this makes sense" vibe to him, a sort of determined bit? But there was a lot of relief nevertheless.
He said he really needed that appointment, that it helped a lot, that he "didn't know why he waited so long to go." He said it was completely different from what he feared/expected. We were trying to tell him that for weeks but I suppose he needed the actual effort of going to really see if it would pan out or not. So it did and I'm glad.

Anyway. There was one thing about yesterday that upset/unsettled us greatly and it's been doing so for months but last night, it finally fit itself to words.

…The brother says he can pick up the thoughts of people around him. I don't doubt this, I just think he's getting interference and doesn't realize it. For example, at home, he only seems to hear the thoughts of people he doesn't like, or who he thinks negatively of. He never claims to hear the twins thoughts, or mom's, or even grandpa's. Just me and the grandmother. And everything he claims to hear is bitter, negative, hateful, spiteful, vindictive…
Now consider that he responds aloud to what he hears/ thinks he hears. Constantly.
It sounds like all our floating voices externalized.

It's terrifying. I could be getting a drink in the kitchen when all of a sudden, from the kitchen table, the brother will spit out some harsh retort to an unknown speaker and it feels like a dagger between the shoulder blades. Even if we were only humming to ourself at that moment. Even if we were thinking about Leagueworlds, or talking to each other. He'll suddenly snarl at us as if we just slandered him. And he insists we did, sometimes, when someone is daring/ scared enough to ask.
…
I'm very scared of that for two reasons.
One, because since he insists everything he hears is legitimate, I'm legitimately terrified that I'm secretly evil, that all those floating voices are the REAL real thing, since he's so perfectly imitating them outside of our head now. So I'm scared that they were right all along. And…
Two, because he claims to be profoundly spiritual, with telepathy and astral projection powers and psychic influences and knowledge that none of the rest of the family has. He meditates for 2+ hours a day, he takes tons of pineal-cleanse supplements, he does Solfeggio meditations and uses essential oils and God only knows what else.
But he's VICIOUS.
He claims it's "passion getting out of control" but I still don't think that's an excuse for emotionally abusing your own grandmother, and then refusing to acknowledge that's what you're doing because "she's evil" or "she's ignorant" or "she's trying to kill me" or something like that.
That woman will come to us weeping like a confused child because she's doing her best in the only ways SHE knows how to show him that she cares, and that she wants him to be happy, even if she doesn't understand a jot of what he's dealing with. She TRIES SO DAMN HARD. She washes his clothes, she cleans up after him, she offers him food even if he won't eat it, she listens the best she can and gives the advice that, according to her experience, works the best. She really really tries and so it makes me both furious and miserable when I see the brother respond to all that with a death glare and a mocking laugh and a perpetual insistence that "all her thoughts are so evil" etc. etc. etc.

So I'm scared.
If that's what "true spiritual progress" means, then…
I'm scared. I'm really scared. I don't want to get like that, and it's making me despondent because everything I WANT to do to improve would mean imitating him.And I'm scared because I'm afraid that, inevitably, it will make me just like him, like he is now.

…I… never really talked about the stuff like that when I went through it, I don't think? Did I? Or did it become so seamlessly integrated into headspace that I never thought to single it out like he is?

I "hear thoughts" too sometimes, or at least, I think I do. But more often than not, I'm aware it's introjected phrases, or assumptions, or things like that. However, I'm aware when people pick up mine. THAT'S been tested and it holds out. I've been able to "project" thoughts before, and have people say those things within seconds. (Never manipulatively, just in the sense of "here's an idea") I can also tell when I'm "broadcasting" because it gets a specific feeling, and it may or may not happen intentionally. (Some people in headspace have called me out on this too, to be prudent.)
Mostly we hear either the "floating voices"-- which are invariably cruel and damning and judgmental and fire-and-brimstone even when they claim to be "of God;" they are defined by fear-- or the "guides," like Mr. Sandman, who feel totally different and don't bark orders, they just offer help and little "life hacks" and have been responsible for MULTIPLE inexplicable synchronicity chains that are TOO BIG to ignore or even take lightly.
So that's another something that we get.
Astral projection, well, that's why we stopped meditating for a while, because we'd end up 100% in headspace/ heartspace and you never know how crazy stuff's gonna get there. It's the internal grounding/ visuals/ audio/ tangible stuff that we've lived with daily since childhood. Apparently that's new to the brother? Again, not sure, he doesn't talk about it with us.
Oh, the brother also identifies as otherkin? Fictionkin? What's the term for it now? Either way he personally described it as "feeling like someone else's Tulpa" and I had to get him to explain that before I understood he meant that "I am a thoughtform-being that someone else created" and not "someone is treating me as their tulpa." So, to me, that sounded massively like the fictionkin phenomenon I'm familiar with through all our Outspacers of course. I do know who he identifies as but I won't disclose that here for privacy's sake.

Anyway. We do have a LOT of psychospiritual experiences like he does, and his life situation has mirrored ours to disturbing extents… with one of the most jarring being something I didn't mention here because it makes me feel horrifically guilty and ashamed and upset. It's a parallel between a certain aspect of his situation and a certain aspect of ours, and… I don't know, I'll probably have to discuss it eventually.

But. I'm frightened because his influence on the family is toxic, he's a straight-up energy vampire at this point, and YET he's doing all this good stuff and I know he's a good person but I can't seem to reconcile that dichotomy.


All I know is that we've been very sick and very tired and very stressed for WAY too long and we're losing all our ability to cope.
We're at the point where many of us have stopped fighting.

...

(left unfinished)