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Ok, I’m going to share this disturbing story because at the end, there’s a point that pretty much everyone should know—for your own good. For your own safety.Nobody in the world knows about this besides my wife, and I only told her about it in 2016….16 years after we first met. I’ll spare you the literary fireworks and suspenseful prose and get to the point.This story is 100% true and not embellished.Fair warning: if you’re emotionally sensitive or easily shocked, please do NOT continue reading.My older stepbrother—we’ll call him Dan, my mom’s son from her previous marriage to a raging alcoholic and wife beater—was a disturbed individual. A problem child. All kinds of behavioral problems at school, violence, fighting, harassing girls, the works.He’d gone in for emergency evaluation several times by the age of 17. I’m not sure for what. My parents didn’t share those details with me. But if it was sudden, it had to be either self-harm or threatening someone else.Anyway.It was the end of May, 1988. I was 8 years old. Dan had just turned 15.We had one of those above-ground pools, the kind you drain and cover up in winter, then clean out and refill with water in summer.Well, it was almost June, and the weather had warmed up. So my dad sent me and my older brother outside this Saturday to uncover the pool and scrub it out so he could fill it up with the hose.We unhooked the cover and tossed it aside, and it seemed that at some point during the winter, a squirrel had found his way under the cover. He was probably seeking shelter from the brutal cold, then couldn’t climb back up the pool’s smooth sides, got trapped in there, and died. Poor squirrel =(I said I was going to get Dad to take care of it, and Dan said no, I got it. He went into the garage and came back with the snow shovel. You know, one of those 1980s metal snow shovels, the big rectangular ones.He clambered into the pool and scooped up the squirrel, then carefully climbed back over the side and started walking toward the trash cans sitting against the side of the garage.I felt relieved. Like…whew, that was sad. Glad that’s over.Then Dan called me over to the side of the garage.When I got there, I saw Dan had dropped the squirrel on the cement walkway. He said something like “Watch this,” or “Check this out”.He then proceeded to lift up the shovel and hack it down toward the squirrel’s neck like a guillotine blade. Up and down, over and over. Very vicious and deliberate.I was frozen. I felt like someone had glued my feet to the ground. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t look away. It was like I had to keep looking to find out whether this was actually real or some kind of nightmare.Well, Dan did that for about 30 seconds—until the poor thing’s head was completely hacked off. Its skull was popping through its open mouth from the force of the blows, and its spine was trailing out from behind the ragged wound.He scooped up the head with the shovel and flipped it into the trash can. Grinning. I’ve never seen a sick grin like that ever again in my life, and I hope to god I never have to see one like it again. He just wasn’t there in his eyes. Something was there…but the person I knew as Dan was absent.Then he placed the shovel against the garage and sauntered away. He seemed to have forgotten about the pool, because he went into the house and didn’t come back out.I felt sick, penetrating nausea. I could feel it pulsing in waves all the way through to my spine. I was shaking and sweating and felt like I was going to faint. I don’t know how I manage to avoid throwing up, because I felt like it about 15 times. But in the end, I didn’t.I took the shovel and placed the squirrels body into the trash can, taking care to avoid looking inside. I couldn’t bear seeing that severed head again.I put away the shovel and sat down in the garage, and I just cried and cried. Fear, anger, outrage, sadness, confusion…I couldn’t control this carousel of pain and emotion. The wrongness of it. The ugliness. The disrespect and disregard. The almost joyful way Dan had defiled this animal, debased it, abusing its corpse for his sick amusement.This was not the world I knew. Not until this bright, sunny Saturday morning on the breast of summer. Now it was a world I knew, and I couldn’t run from it, couldn’t escape. I kept seeing that poor squirrel’s pathetic, rotting face and matted fur. This pretty little creature that had once lived and breathed and ate and played, treated like a pile of shit.It was disgusting. No, it was worse than that. It was unjust. Unfair. Disdainful. It was an utter absence of respect for life or death.I never told my parents. I never told anyone. I was terrified about what Dan might do if I squealed. As a devotee of mob movies, horror movies, prison movies and shows, and everything else centered on suffering, humiliation, pain, and anguish, Dan had long since adopted the phrase (spoken to me often, typically with an ugly snarl on his face), “Snitches get stitches”.Now I knew the depths of his sickness and depravity. Now I’d witnessed firsthand the level of corruption infecting his mind.Oh, I’d seen him behaving strangely plenty of times. Acting like a jagoff with his jagoff dropout friends. Taking off his disgusting reeking socks when he got home and shoving them in my little sister’s face. Drawing distorted faces in his school notebook and stabbing them with his pen until the tip broke—he’d do this over and over, sometimes breaking five or six pens at a time.Blasting Cannibal Corpse and other death metal music while punching his bedroom walls when our parents weren’t home. Ripping the pages out of books like Bender in The Breakfast Club (I had to replace To Kill A Mockingbird at least three times…it seemed to be one of his favorite targets for annihilation).Scrawling disturbing mottoes like ALL N—-GERS DIE and BURN F—-ING JEWS in the pages of his schoolbooks alongside crude swastikas and six-pointed stars, probably imitating what he saw in Nazi documentaries (he loved those…the gorier the better) and the covers of Slayer albums.But now, it was all different.Now I knew he was genuinely dangerous.And from that moment on, I fully grasped his capacity to cause pain. Maybe even to kill. And there was no way I’d risk his wrath. Not after seeing that horrifying spectacle. No way.Well.Dan eventually got expelled from the next two high schools he attended. By the following summer, he’d quit attempting to further his education and got a job selling knives, ninja swords, illegal fireworks, and hardcore bootleg porn at the local flea market. He grew fond of putting these movies on the VCR when our parents weren’t home, then calling me into the room so I’d get a nasty shock seeing things I didn’t understand, but knew I wasn’t supposed to be looking at.Then followed a long period of getting married to horrible women, having kids with them, and abandoning them.Between the ages of 21 and 30, I was introduced to three infant nieces and one nephew, all born from different moms.Six months was the longest I knew any of them, because as soon as the baby was born, Dan would abandon the mom and move on. By the age of 35, he was tangled up in a grotesque web of alimony, child support, two personal lawsuits against him, and a pending charge of sexual battery for whipping his current wife with a video game controller cord.He’d handcuffed her to the bed (he was heavily into S&M…I know, I was shocked by that too, right) and ignored her safe word. By the time he released her, she was cut, bruised, and bleeding all up and down the back of her body, including some deep lacerations where the hard plastic plug had torn away chunks of skin.Oh…did I mention she was pregnant at the time?Shortly after, Dan went into the hospital because he was experiencing heart flutters, murmurs, something like that. Not surprising. Dan had been snorting coke and pumping himself with steroids for about 10 years at that point. He was a 6′3, 230-pound animal who’d break your ass for looking at him crossways. I can’t even tell you how many times he narrowly escaped arrest for beating up someone in a bar, at a baseball game, at a party, you name it. Like all psychopaths, he had an innate talent for manipulation and playing the victim very convincingly.Well, Dan passed away while under anesthesia, and they couldn’t revive him.It was December 18th. I remember because it was the day after my mom’s birthday. We all gathered at her house to be together and mourn.And I felt so…incredibly…relieved.The dragon was dead.See, I’d never quite gotten over all the crazy shit Dan had done during my childhood. The squirrel incident was just one chapter in a large book of other disturbing episodes, the tamest of which I described above.I’d never stopped being afraid of him.Every time I saw him, no matter where we were or for what reason, that evil grin was all I could see. Those dark gray clouds in his eyes that veiled any scrap of good judgment or humanity lurking inside him.I say with no hint of guilt that to me, his funeral was a celebration.Judge me if you will.You never lived with him.Never wandered down to the basement to play Nintendo and almost pissed your pants out of shock and fear because all of your little sister’s Barbies and Cricket and Teddy Ruxpin and Carebears were hanging by their necks from the sewage pipe like condemned criminals, motionless and noosed with pieces of your mom’s laundry line he’d cut up with her sewing scissors.Never had to sit there watching all the Faces of Death videos in the living room during winter break while mom and dad were out doing their Christmas shopping. Shaking and sick because he promised he’d beat your ass if you dared close your eyes or look away. I’m fairly sure he’d gotten this idea from A Clockwork Orange, one of his favorite movies. I had nightmares for months after that one, not knowing at the time those movies are 90% special effects from low-budget movies.Never found a pleasantly wrapped gift on your bed on your 11th birthday after school, then opened it thinking it was a surprise present from your parents or little sister, and discovering it’s a packet of of violent gang rape porn pictures he’d printed out and wrapped at some point.Never had to bear the harsh physical punishments and groundings from your dad because your older brother enticed you into the alley with some early fireworks on July 3rd, only to watch him light an entire pack of Black Cats and toss them into a full dumpster and cause a huge fire, with that same shark’s grin and empty gaze, and then threatening you with pain and humiliation if you dared tell your parents who’d really done it. So you have to take the blame and the punishment, not to mention watching your parents stress and worry because they’re concerned you’re going down the same bad road as Dan.Snitches get stitches.Never feared going to sleep at night, wondering whether you’d wake up someday with him standing over you, holding a knife or your dad’s acetylene torch and a lighter. Ready to do serious harm to your body for no good reason, just because it got into his head, like crossing paths with a rabid dog that’ll bite anything within reach. Wearing that skull’s smile. Those absent eyes gazing down at you, blank and lifeless. Like a doll’s eyes.Did he get in trouble for doing these kinds of things? Sure. But what can you do? Can’t throw him out of the house at 14 or 15 or 16. Can’t beat him into submission. Can’t commit him permanently, because he hadn’t done anything to justify that course of action.At least, not unless I confessed everything I’d seen him do. And there was no way I’d run that risk…and he knew I wouldn’t. So he had that power.I was glad he was dead.I still am.Guys, girls, friends…you need to speak up.Please…please do not let this sort of terrible behavior continue unchecked. If you witness anything like this happening…especially someone harming animals or people, starting fires, causing someone humiliation, or anything that disturbs you…you need to tell someone.Don’t be the coward I was. Because not only did my terrified silence hurt other people—it hurt me too. Maybe I could have helped put a stop to it and saved a lot of people a lot of pain later in life…including myself. I could have prevented the trauma and destruction. I could have saved a few more fatherless kids the anguish of growing up without a dad. And I could have saved myself from the paranoia, distrust, fear, suspicion, and nightmares that still plague me to this day.Speak up. Tell someone. They will believe you.Look for the helpers.Nobody needs any more nightmares. Not while they’re sleeping…and not while they’re awake. Because they don’t stop when you awaken or grow up. Take it from me—the flames are all gone…but the pain lingers on.The monsters are real. They’re out there right now, today, this very minute.They exist. But so do the helpers.And this is a true story.Rob

I'm going to write this from the only point of view I have — as the person at the facility whose job it was to meet with the individual and family and determine whether or not my staff were capable of providing a successful living situation for them.I actually ended up making myself an entire packet of forms and tick-box assessments to use so that I didn't overlook anything and always assessed people the same way. I used this to assess all incoming people, no matter their medical diagnosis or disability, though I do speak of some considerations for Alzheimer's in particular here.Factor #1– MobilityThe very first thing I would look at was how mobile a person was.Can they walk on their own?Do they need a walker?A wheelchair?Have they had any amputations?My houses themselves were residential single-family domiciles that had been converted. Most of them had simply turned the garage into living space, maybe an additional room at the back. The law only required one bathroom and 1 bedroom plus the front door to be fully ADA compliant.So it was cramped — imagine adding three extra couches into your living room, and a big tv, and still needing to to be able to put four wheel chairs in that living room too, and still not run over anyone as you walked through. Now try to squeeze those three wheelchairs in to your dining room table along with everyone else. We were just an average house on an average street, not remotely mansion-like. No wide open spaces here!I had to consider who I already had living in my house. If I already had four wheelchairs and two walkers, did I have any space left?Need a power chair, electric wheel chair, or mobility scooter? Sorry (not sorry) but those won't even fit past the doorway. Like literally you can get through the door, but either won't be able to make the turn into the house, or you will start running into furniture about 5 feet inside.Factor #2– TransfersTransfers refers to the act of moving one's self from one position to another, such as from sitting to standing, or from a wheelchair to a toilet.We only staffed one caregiver per shift, to care for up to 10 people. If they could walk — at all- I usually just skipped past this and moved on. But if they were dependent on a wheelchair, I had to consider other factors.And anyone who needed a mechanical lift (sit- stand or hoyer) machine was out already. They are illegal in Assisted Living in my state.Could they stand up from the wheelchair by themselves or with only a grab bar?Did they just need a boost getting up, but were good on their feet once standing?Or did they need someone to physically lift them out of the chair and help support them once standing?My caregivers were almost universally female, and many of the short and petite variety. Physical strength has its limit, and when you are trying to maneuver a full grown person, the amount of weight you can manage depends greatly on how much they are able to help you.So I had an unspoken weight limit in my head. I usually had the eyeball it, as many in wheelchairs were unable to stand, but if I guessed them to be over 200lbs, they probably didn't qualify. Under that, with proper technique and body mechanics, I was reasonably sure my staff could manage transfers safely.We are also talking about Alzheimer's patients in particular. It's a disease that gradually erases your ability to perform tasks on your own volition. Then it erases your ability to be able to do them when reminded. Then the ability to follow directions through it. And eventually the ability to do it at all has disappeared.So for someone who need more than a helping hand or a good boost up, I was forced to consider the size of the patient. I couldn't risk putting them, or my staff at risk of being hurt. And while falls happen, I have to do whatever I can to avoid them, even of it means turning down a paying customer.Sure, today grandpa is able to hold on to the grab bar just fine once we get him on his feet. But will he still be able to do that 3 months or 6 months from now? In a year? Nobody knows that for sure. And with Alzheimer's especially, that downwards slide is inevitable, but there's no telling if it will take 1 year or 10 years more.Factor #3– TempermentPersonality and temperament were a big thing with my boss and I when deciding if someone got to move in, and where they moved to.Early bird, or night owl?Likes to be social, or keeps mostly to themselves?Likes to watch TV, or prefers books or puzzles?Laid-back and easy to please, or stubborn and highly particular about things their way?What languages do they speak?8 beds meant 7 other roommates to consider. And at least half of them had roommates — whether they liked it or not. So in addition to same gender roommates, we tried to match people as best we could to the personalities already living there.Broken placements included: the staunch conservative and the liberal, whose feud began with dueling blaring tv newscasts and ended with hurling insults (I'm sure there would have been a fistfight if either one could have walked over to the other); the guy who screamed and threw himself out of his chair; the one who hit his neighbor because he sneezed at the breakfast table; the one who got kicked out of everywhere else; the guy who never got full that broke the door to get into the locked pantry.Language is a huge part of personal identity, so being New Mexico there are naturally people who speak Spanish in addition to English. We tried to make sure that we placed them with at least one person who also spoke their language in the house. With Dementia, knowing a person's native tongue can be especially helpful. If they spoke mostly Spanish until they started going to school, often there becomes a time when they have a harder time understanding commands and prompts in English. If you can say them in Spanish, you often get a better and faster response — even if you don't know any more than simple phrases you use at work.Then there's mental health and behavioral conditions to consider.Some psychiatric disorders are of no concern — I had a house full of people with schizophrenia and personality disorders that were the most easygoing, agreeable group of people.Others are more difficult to tell. There was more than one “obsessive compulsive disorder” and “personality disorder” with “anxiety disorder” on paper, who seemed perfectly stable and even sweet on assessments, that actually turned out to be addicted to pain pills. I can think of four of those offhand, and none stayed more than 6 months before eviction day.Then there's dementia and behaviors.Quite a few of the behaviors themselves are generally harmless to the person and others, but they make the other residents nervous for them — wandering, exit seeking, repeated phrases and questions, fixating, playing with food or other unmentionable things, constantly rearranging things, verbal outbursts and physical lashing out.All of these were easy to manage in our locked dementia unit. The precautionary measures we had in place prevented any real danger, and the other residents either didn't mind or understand enough to care.In our other houses these same behaviors cause problems for the staff and the residents. Wandering and exit seeking often lead to residents trying to keep the wanderer safe, or caused conflict because they wandered into a room or closet that wasn't theirs. Repetitive questions aggravates after you've given the same response 10 times in the past hour. Verbal outbursts cause arguments and resentment from the others. Physical lashing out meant it was way too easy for someone else to get hurt by accident.Also unique to dementia and Alzheimer's homes is the way that one person's mood or attitude is quickly rubbed off onto the whole group. A bad day here and there is manageable. Even with a large group you have more ok and good days than bad. But if you put in a person who is surly and argumentative at every turn, it turns to madness. The others start getting anxious and jumpy. Their behaviors increase and it becomes harder to manage everyone at once. As their agitation level rises, so does their fall risk.Factor #4– Personal Health & Medical HistoryI had to be sure that my staff were able to meet all of a patient's medical needs.As an ALF, regulations highly restricted what we could and could not do as carers, but certain things were permissible if done by the resident themselves, their family member or POA, or a Home Care or Hospice Nurse.What doctor do they go to? Will someone take them there? Have I worked them before? Might they want to move to one who knows me personally, or better yet, one who will come to us at home?What medications do they take and when?What pharmacy do they use? Is family going to pick them up and bring them to us, or will they let us move them to one that will deliver to us in bubble packs?Are they diabetic? Do they need insulin? Can they give it to themselves?These were just a few of the things I had to consider.Medications could only be given exactly as the doctor wrote on a prescription. We had to either have a copy of the order sent to us, or to get it from the pharmacy. The label on the pill bottle itself wasn't good enough for whoever made the rules, especially if it varied by even one word. The orders were golden. Anything else was just double checking.And this applied to everything they ever swallowed, inhaled, put on their skin, or dropped into their eyes and ears. Tylenol, vitamins, supplements, diaper rash cream. All had to have written documentation from the doctor who told them to take it, or they didn't get it. It didn't matter if it was dangerous not to get it.And since we kept everything locked up in the office, and legally were supposed to confiscate anything we might find, there was sometimes a lot of run around trying to get the right paperwork. If we were lucky and they had hospice or a home health nurse, they might be willing to write it down for us.The only way around it was for a family member to physically come to the house and give it themselves. When Grandma had a cold I usually suggested that we keep the cough syrup in our office and they come by as often as they can to give it until I got the orders.My only exception, and most frequent breach of regulations, was keeping a stash of Immodium in all of my houses and letting staff give it regardless of orders. No one should have to suffer with diarrhea just because of how hard it was to get the pills and the paperwork short notice.Then how they took their medicine. If they could swallow pills whole, no problem. But if they couldn't? Yup I had to have paperwork before I could legally crush the pills and give them in apple sauce. And some medications can't be crushed — which meant research to double check their entire med list so that I could mark in bold font which one's had to remain whole.Insulin was a tricky one. Short acting or long acting. Regular dosing, or sliding scale. Blood sugar testing. And they have to give the shot to themself, with no help from the staff except reminders how to do it. I required all insulin to be in the prefilled pens, so there weren't dosing mistakes with hand drawn syringes. Even with that, it was apparently against the rules for my staff to set the pens to the correct dose before handing it to the patient.Pain meds. People get so anxious about their pain meds, sometimes rightfully so. Other times they're obsessive about getting the exact dosage precisely when they're allowed to. Some don't understand why they can't just get an extra pill when they need it.More than two narcotic prescriptions on the list and I start to worry. The worst ones deliberately seek out different doctors for prescriptions treating different conditions and fill them at separate facilities. These are the ones that end up with withdrawal symptoms within a day or two of coming into our home. Havoc ensues, either because they are harassing staff for their pills, or their pill-seeking habits drive them to figure out how to get their hands on more pills and smuggle them in. (One lady got so desperate she started going to dentists for pain pills when I clued in all of her doctors — she even went out of her way to find a new pharmacy) It gets crazy ya'll.And lastly medical conditions themselves. Is there any actual medical care they need on a regular basis? Wounds or bed sores have to be treated and monitored by a nurse, we weren't allowed. Catheter? We could only empty it, and help put their pants and underwear on over it. Need a nurse again. Colostomy bag? I hope they can manage it themselves, because I can't guarantee everyone on staff has even heard the term, let alone replace or fix it themselves.Feeding tube, not allowed. Picc line. Nope. Recieving Chemotherapy? No nurse on hand if you have a bad reaction. Food allergies? We will do our best, but I can't deny the people their peanut butter or their ice cream (true story). Vegetarian? I will do what I can, but I don't have the budget to stock a ton of specialty items or ready made foods for you. Vegan? Yeah, not realistic for me given storage space and time constraints to make sure no animal products cross your plate, but you can have some freezer and cabinet space for ready made meals that you pay for.Diet restrictions, cardiac, renal, gout? Sure, what kind, and I'll probably need guidance for meal planning and reminders + patience for if I get it wrong, and please bring some of your favorite goodies with you to keep here. Fluid restrictions? No problem, except in the Dementia house, I can't guarantee there won't be any excess intake there.That's all I can think of, though my magic assessment packet covers more. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way down here!

Stress, causing her mental illness to escalate til her symptoms became unmanageable for her or in a home setting. 30 day holds usually mean she is significantly too dangerous to others or herself. She checked into either protect her sons, her family or herself.It is rumored her father is dying or something like that. These major life moments create huge amounts of stress which can greatly exacerbate symptoms. With these more severe symptoms she will need stronger medicines, 24 hour supervision, and a whole team of medical proffessionals.She will need a lock down, completely secured facility to provide a safe place to protect her and who is around her while she receives this help. She will need caregivers who are trained to deal with her symptoms and behavior that comes with these situations. She will need systems, equipment and tools that a mental health facility has.When you are really ill, with her disease, you go to the place with the doctors and staff are specifically trained to treat that disease. And that place is the mental hospital. Often you can learn to manage this disease at home under the guidance of a doctor. However, if her symptoms are severe enough or she feels like she can no longer care for yourself or her designated caregivers feel they can no longer successful treat her, it is better to go to a facility.If I had to guess, based on what I have heard, I would say she was psychotic for too long at home and not making head way coming out of the psychosis. She may not have even felt safe at home any longer and needed to be moved to a place she could feel less stress.Mental hospitals may be where she feels safest, and when you are very sick, sometimes you will not recover until you feel safe.Here is my story so you can understand why and how this happens.I was in and out of mental hospitals trying to learn and manage my illness for the first ten years. Older, repeat patients told me to do everything I could to prevent coming back.I think the process is really about finding and knowing your own truth and that is what we all search for. However, these truths don't mean as much if we have to keep re-learning them.Sometimes, you go to the mental hospital to be reminded of and feel your truths. It can feel so good to be in a safe environment, away from your stressors, around like-minded individuals who are living their own truths and feeling emotions that have been denied for so long.Feeling and not building up emotions like shame, failure, anger etc. on the outside is hard because we have access to all our coping mechanisms, such as alcohol, spending, sex, food, drugs, etc. which can provide escape but not healing or growth.Going to the mental institution breaks you from these and lets the emotions pore out. After you release them, you finally realize reality is not that bad and get better.The cycle continues until you learn to really manage your stress, take breaks from your stressors, use healthier coping mechanisms, embrace the variety of tools that can change brain chemistry and release emotion more effectively.Going to the mental institution can become an addiction like everything else, but the drugs they use like Haldol, can really damage the brain. Over time, your symptoms worsen, become more frequent, you do not respond or recover as quickly. There is a price and your health suffers.You need to try to limit these extremes to protect brain functioning. They don't like you to know how frequent or long-term exposure to anti-psychotics harms the brain. But if you are out-of-control or not functioning in reality, they do not have many options. Everyone knows the sentence: you would be a danger to others or yourself.I think the point is if you have been a danger, you could be again. Be diligent. Don't give up, on yourself or someone who is mentally ill. We all have some form of mental illness, to some degree, or at some time. There will always be someone who makes you feel normal or more normal than them. But we all have something we can contribute and can tame our own demons. There are success stories and you can be one of them.Stay out of the hospital, stay healthy, remove yourself from toxic people, even if they are family, try everything the doctors suggest, see if and which meds work for you. You can use the more dangerous ones as responsible as you can. I use an antipsychotic as needed for times of high stress but I am aware of the damage I am causing my body. Another drug my psych doc perscribes works great for me but is going to cause kidney failure eventually. But I know this and have accepted it. My mind is much better on it, and so I know what the price is. I have learned my disease, how and why my symptoms increase and how to de-escalate them.These are my truths from someone who has mental illness to you.I am diagnosed clinically with shizoaffective disorder. My grandfather was shizophrenic. I manage well with an average of 6 year periods of symptom free existance around a week or 2 period of psychosis.Symptoms in those either 1 to 16 days of delusions go from bipolar symptoms to dissociative disorder before becoming full-blown schizophrenic symptoms unless I intervene. There is a genetic component, and biology that has some things you can not control and some you can. I have learned many techniques from locking myself in a room, to intense workouts and then falling asleep in showers, to any activity that allows for creativity to popping one tranquilizer or a doc-approved amount of 8 at a time, to checking myself into a hospital, or asking a friend to come take care of me for a day or two at home.Sometimes, I have just decided to stop thinking delusionally and can “snap myself out of it.” Sometimes it was a matter of will power to curb delusional thought and sometimes I am so far out of touch that I had to be forcefully restrained or removed from society.The thing is for me, 2 weeks every six years is pretty manageable. But I also know others who don't fair as well.The key for myself is that I have set up a good support system and I try to love myself as best I can. I can report that I am happy and productive and have an overall good life. I feel successful, am thought of as successful by society and that all my dreams are coming or have come true.My mental condition has not limited me, though it has challenged me. On a positive note, it has often even provided me with some divergent thinking that has been essential to who I am.As I have aged, I have come to believe that I have a dysfunctional brain, but there are some advantages at times from the disfunction. I can act very well in a high-stress environment for a limited time. I can think calmly and quickly and can analyze more information at a faster rate when stressed. I also can be more sensitive to subtle factors in reading the environment and from other people. I have had many experiences of accurate premonition and can connect on a unconscious level to people I focus on and many can attest to this. I am often able to see solutions that others can't and connections others don't.Also, I have some pretty strong academic abilities, scoring over 100% in advanced academic college classes, such as anatomy/physiology, etc. and broke my college’s record for most amount of classes taken during a semester. I had to get special permission and scored all A's. Also, people are often impressed by my creative achievements.I tell you this, to let you know that there are gifted, well-rounded individuals who also have this disease and work diligently on daily emotional processing, thought monitoring and disease management, but most others DO NOT KNOW of their illness. This effort can also become so practiced that for the majority of your life, you can devote your time and energy to pursue a “normal life.” For me, I have been able to have a life with children, a successful marriage, career and stability for 98% of my days.This is despite having completely abnormal mental functioning. On what some would say a “metaphysical” level, I am able to allow my body to be controlled by other forces. This feels like a supernatural force that can take over your body. I also have a different experience with time. I am able to jump ahead consciously to periods of time in the future and have no memory of getting to these next moments, if desired. These last two behaviors are ones I do not do any longer for obvious reasons of self-harm.While it can be argued I am not really doing this but only thinking I am doing this, the fact remains, that I can feel this. Meaning, I can FEEL an autopilot switch turned on and the autopilot is way better than I am. I can do this at anytime even when symptom free but it takes more mental effort to stop than start. I have learned to FEEL and cultivate the experience of choice during these experiences. This means that I have some power that I can exercise when my senses start changing. Over time, I have learned to strengthen this ability to start or stop symptoms and it mostly started when I became open to the possibility.Belief in the power of your mind is just one small part and especially in the beginning I needed lots of professional help and support from family in order to really provide stability to my brain chemistry.Another mental concept is consciousness and how we interpret time. I can feel the experience of simply becoming conscious at a different moment, meaning I can turn off my brain, but still get myself to another point in life. This is like functioning with witnessing the autopilot or choosing to completely hand my life over and not even witness it until I decide to “turn on again.”It is kind of like your life is a tape and you just say, stop, fast forward, stop and then play again.I elaborate on this to help you understand the appeal of the delusional mind, the appeal of psychosis and how it can become an addiction of sorts to not feel, or cope. The more you embrace non-reality, the more you stay in it and the harder it gets to come back to the real.For example, there have been times in my past where I just no longer wished to experience what I was experiencing. Maybe I was going thru something where I felt my safety threatened or maybe I just didnt want to experience boredom.When stressed, I have had visual hallucinations that changed my life for the better because they gave me the strength to do what was best. Seeing a glimpse of what could be the future and knowing with absolute certainty it is a truth is extremely motivating. I have also been able to hear in auditory hallucinations, words from loved ones or felt feelings from them that helped me know the truth.Even to this day, if I really want to open myself up to others, I can concentrate in the dark and hear their input on my life, what they are thinking, especially with regards to me and how they are feeling. These are auditory hallucinations, because for me, I really hear their voice.I try not to do this because it can open yourself up to too much of their emotions. Beside becoming more self conscious and insecure, you can become consumed with fear, paranoia, worst-case scenerios. Emotions are not just the good ones, such as peace and love and navigating the gamut is no joke. But, even with my boundaries up, if their pain is strong enough, I will feel it, and this has helped me understand why they do what they do the next day or later.Additionally, the pull to “broaden your senses" came at times when I didn't know what the right thing to do was and decided to sink into my auto guidance and just follow the wonderful things it did. It was great at the time because I did some amazing things and could just skip some rougher times.From a survival standpoint, one could see the advantage. Stuck in prison, better to go insane. I, personally, have lived in padded rooms, confined in restraints, lived without a window for what I believed could be forever. I have woken up on concrete, with no clothes (safety risk) with only a drain to stare at for hours upon hours.Sadly, staring at drains, or waking up to the view of a drain as I have either passed out, fallen asleep or finally woken up to reality on a cold concrete or tile floor has become something familiar to me. And instead of sparking fear can spark comfort as it means I am alive and in a safe place I can recover. The only worrisome issue is how bad of shape my physical body is in and what permament damage I have to the body and mind I actually really love.Of course, this is just one of the extremely serious risks of delusional thought that are too numerous to even list. There were times, in the heat of psychosis that people thought I was trying to kill myself when in my mind I thought I was elevating my existance to another level. Death, naturally, is a legitimate concern as the flame burns quick with often devastating consequences.Many schizoaffectives over history have died from just complete exhaustion, of pushing themselves too hard during moments of delusion or mania. Some have been the greatest inventors, and charismatic leaders of their time. You can really push yourself to the extreme with some extraordinary results and awareness and more commonly some devastating impacts to loved ones, jobs, or worse, society.Here is a mild example. Once, while psychotic in a mental hospital, I really wanted to understand the emotional effects of food on a most basic level. In order to start at the beginning of how my body and mind truly felt and were effected by different food I survived first on air, then water, then days on 3 of those tiny Half and Half little tubs, before adding slowly, a little jam packet to feel the effects of sugar vs. dairy.You get the picture, until I finally graduated to real pieces of substance in forms of protein, starch, and essential vitamins. You can see how eye-opening this experience could be and also how dangerous. And also how some might think you have an eating disorder when really you normally love food and always maintain a healthy weight and muscle mass.Less mild examples of being able to push your body include escaping handcuffs, a straitjacket, needing four police officers to restrain me, and breaking thru hospital locked doors.When psychotic, I have learned so much about my abilities and personality. I love singing, dancing, tedious activities, design, nearly all sports, and have a huge need for physical exertion. I have learned this from what I do in mental hospitals. I have cleaned every inch of floor in a wing on my hands and knees with a sock and spit. I have “rock climbed” up windows. I have made an entire outfit, including shoes, out of toilet paper. I have made a sculptural painting on a mirror out of peanut paper. I have learned exactly how tight I like to be restrained with the right amount of pain, without leaving marks on my body. I have realized how nice it can feel to be really tightly but not too painfully restrained because you can fight and fight, as long and hard as you want without hurting anyone. Except yourself. And sometimes you just want to fight yourself because you are so angry and have only you to blame.I have since learned there are more productive ways to do things similar, but outside of the hospital.Learning to live in the now, in a shared reality, feeling the pain of life is definitely a process. Ultimately, I think we all just want to connect. For me, discipline, healthy choices, including healthy thought, and emotional stability all conflict with mental ilness. It is a life-long ilness, but so can any addiction, as it becomes a pattern of the mind and body. But it can be retrained, accomodations can be made, and accepted.We all have our limitations and dysfunction. It is what it is. I love my mind and would not change it. I try to keep it functioning every day as best I can. Stress, diet, poor choices, too much adrenaline, repetitive thoughts, worrying, inconsistant sleep schedule, unsafe environments, unresolved trama, lack of support system, toxic relationships, hallucinogens and hormonal changes all accaserbate the illness.To learn more about what I suggest for those who are struggling with self harm and learning new coping strategies, read on.Everyone self harms. Its completely normal. Alcohol destroys your liver. Soda destroys your teeth. Obesity destroys your insulin cells. Cigarettes destroy your lungs. Video games destroy your attention span. Shopping destroys your checking account. I could go on and on.The thing is whether the risk, long-term or short-term is worth the immediate pleasure. Finding the healthiest activity that can still soothe the need is ideal.For example, if you have learned to feel pleasure or emotional release from physical pain, boxing or MMA fighting might be more productive than say, sitting alone cutting your skin.There are so many different examples, you just have to find what works for you and get creative. I am sure you can find something that though there is risk of harm, could also provide you with opportunities, passion and a deeper connection with others.But know, that anything you chose could be done destructively, if done too hard, too often or too frequent. For example, you can exercise too much and ruin your joints or have an unhealthy fat percentage where your body starts eating your muscles for energy.Or take something else universally deemed “healthy,” such as meditation. You can start spending so much time trying to live in that moment of a completely clear mind, that you lose hours of time you could actually be producing something or strengthning your relationship with someone else.I would worry less about not self harming and focus more on embracing the emotion rather than coping. Coping, means you are just trying to get by. The point is to release the pain, not dull it just to make it to Day 2.Your goal as an individual is to figure out you. This means not coping but suffering. You learn who you are when you suffer. You feel the pain and survive. The more you cope, the less feeling you actually do.What do you do when you truly feel the pain, failure, shame, despair, loss, helplessness, loneliness? You live it, you feel it in everyway possible in an environment where others help protect you from danger, until you finally realize, they kept you alive and you chose to live.You do not need to cope all the time. Sometimes, you have to just cope temporarily until you get to a safe place. Go to your safe place. Remove obvious tools of self harm, but if you really wanted to smash your own head against a wall you could right? Ask a friend to restrain you so you can just lash out without abandon. Ask a friend to just sit with you while you cry and scream obsenities. Or just do by yourself. Sit, close your eyes and tap into the pain. Stay there and dwell in it. Feel what it feels like to not be able to breathe or move and sink further into the emotion until you really know it. Check yourself into a hotel room and ask room service to bring you food in a few hours to check on you or get a wakeup call at 3am to make sure you’re “awake.”You figure out your own safe place. Cultivate your own support system to HELP you experience emotion and limit risk. You don’t have to do this alone. Everyone is different. I could give you tons of suggestions on coping. Plunge your head in ice water, put hot blankets on, get a massage, or give yourself an orgasm. Sometimes, I have run a hot bath and just blown bubbles under the water to focus on my breathing. But the truth is, you will just be creating another habit. In order to live LESS mindlessly, less stuck in just your previous mental auto patterns, you have to just live and experience the ups and downs of life. It is easier to do this when you believe in yourself, know your capabilities and have learned your own worth.You do this by suffering, because when you survive the worst pain you could imagine, you start believing in yourself, or a higher power who was there at your lowest point, and you find your worth. You are worthy simply because you were created and here and deemed worthy to be.As you get older and more comfortable with emotions, if you experience them rather than immediately coping, you will have less highs and lows and longer normal days. Most of the time, you are able to then feel less intense emotions and more participation in activities you choose.Life shouldn't be about lots of highs and lows. When you dwell in these areas of existance too long you truly experience self harm, damage to your brain. If you can learn to not fear the emotion you will gain mastery over it. You cannot do this without establishing a comfort level. This means, at a certain point, you have to let go of your coping mechanism.While you might not be ready to let go of your security blanket or perferred tool of self-harm yet, the rewards are a higher level of existance. You can graduate to your stronger self.How long it takes you to learn or change does not matter. What is of value, is that we are all able to change, learn and what seems like an impossible feat at the time is really possible for you. You are not the first and are not the last person, learning to live in the painful reality of life. It is the human condition. We are all in it together and we must help each other, like a good psychotherapist is obligated to do.