My Markers

We can learn a whole lot from markers. Yes, the colored markers that we all use from a very young age. Some are thin, others are fat, some are dull, others are bright. Some are light, while others are dark, some work well while others don’t. There are colored markers that have unusual names like cerulean and ochre, yet … they all live peacefully together in the same pencil case.

When it comes to mental illness, let’s all take a tip from these markers and accept everyone even if they are different from the rest of us. Let’s behave toward a person with a mental illness the way we treat someone with a physical illness. Let’s be helpful to those who need help, and most of all, let’s drop the word STIGMA.

 

Lets talk about mental illness …

PLEASE find it in your hearts to donate money toward research on mental illness. Relatives of people with mental illnesses are starting to lobby their governments for more money for treatments and research. Some are beseeching top scientists to push for higher stakes in their research. I know how often I prayed for a cure when my son was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia – when not one single medication helped relieve his symptoms. When some people hear the word schizophrenia or bipolar illness, they have been known to withdraw their support even though millions of people all over the world are living with mental illnesses as well as other brain diseases. Some are curable – but we have to work that much harder to cure those that are not.

 

A rocky period when your children are teenagers …

APPROPRIATE FOR PARENTS OF TEENAGERS.

 

I visited a friend who was in the middle of a heated argument with her teenage children. I felt rather uncomfortable about having walked in at such an inopportune moment but she was far too busy to notice. A while later, she turned to me, and in the most ordinary of tones said: ” Mother Nature is truly wonderful, you know. She gave me 14 years to develop a deep love for my children before turning them into teenagers!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The BULLY’S MOTHER.

“Who is this student’s mother? Where is she?” A large man with a deep voice yelled. “I need to speak with her now.”

Claire knew that no matter what  that man was angry about, her son, Roger,  was the target of his rage, and that his mother; ME, was the person he was searching for. She would have loved to run away and hide but her sweet, fair-haired son, Roger, was approaching and the red-faced, enraged father was grasping him by his collar. Claire breathed deeply, aware that other mothers were holding their children’s hands, relieved that their little darlings were not the culprits. “I’m his mother,”  Claire managed to say before the tirade began. “What’s wrong with your son?” the father yelled. “I was walking  along, holding my daughter’s hand and chatting to her when your aggressive son came out of nowhere and hit her without provocation. What’s the matter with him? Do you and your husband or boyfriend beat him up?” Claire glanced at her son who was wearing that now familiar expression of sheepishness and defiance while the angry father was probably waiting for me, his mother, to get my Roger to apologize. BUT,  I knew that it was not  going to happen. I blurted out ”I’m so sorry. I will talk to my child,” and looked into my son’s eyes wondering for the 100th time what was wrong with him and what made him hit other students?” I was angry too, because I was no longer an ordinary mother. I was the mother of The Bully, a title I’ve lived with for years. When my toddler  was barely three years old, my girlfriend’s husband said that my darling child had intimidated their son and was too rough. Then I was asked  to remove him from the playgroup because he’d boxed a child there and was no longer welcome. After that, angry mothers, raging fathers and tearful schoolchildren came to complain. I sought the help of a therapist and did my best to implement what I’d learned there. To no avail. As Roger grew older, there were less complaints.

One day, soon after my younger son had started  school, he came home sobbing. “What happened?” I asked. “He, he, he took my lollipop.” “Who did?” “The big boy.” “Did you simply give it to him?” “Yes.”  “Why?” “He said I had to.” And Claire felt  more relieved than she had felt her whole life. Her younger son, the Bully’s brother, was now the victim. She and her husband had one son who was a bully and the other, a victim.

Both boys came from the same parents and lived in the same house so, how could they have produced two sons so different?

Can anyone explain this phenomena?

 

 

 

 

CONSIDERATION TOWARD HANDICAPPED PEOPLE

Insufficient  consideration is given to people with handicaps. Car manufacturers advertise cars with large baggage compartments for wheelchairs, yet, very often folded wheelchairs do not fit in.

Airplane toilets are  notoriously tiny and uncomfortable; not only for a handicapped person, as they are very cramped. Every toilet should have a bar for the occupants to hold onto and the toilet paper rolls should be hung in a user-friendly spot.

Hotel showers need to be equipped with plastic chairs or wheelchairs that have been treated to withstand water, so that a handicapped person can sit while taking a shower.

Beaches also need to invest in specially designed wheelchairs that can run on rails into the ocean, enabling handicapped persons to get into the water for the first time in their lives. I witnessed the expression on a man’s face while he used one of them in Eilat, Israel. His expression was one of pure ecstasy.

There are supermarkets  that provide devices that magnify price tags for visually impaired people. Some doctor’s waiting rooms have chairs without backs or armrests that are not possible for a handicapped person to feel safe on and offices put official forms onto tables that are too high to allow easy access to the handicapped person.

I am friendly with a couple  who used the  concept or universal design when building their home with the needs of one of the occupant’s in mind at all times. Their kitchen was cleverly designed to cater to her needs, The doors aresufficiently wide to allow wheelchair access or ambulance stretcher access. Their shower is large and the toilet higher than the standard ones. Toilet paper rolls were hung in a sensible place. Even the flower beds in the garden have been raised and the outdoor space resembles ‘The Secret Garden’ by France’s Hodgson Burnett.

All the floors are covered with non-slip tiles. Light switches are at a comfortable height too. A great deal of thought was put into the construction of this house and they did a wonderful job. She was responsible for the charming decor.

HOW SHOULD ONE BEHAVE ?

PART ONE

It may seem odd to ask how we should behave toward someone with schizophrenia but we really didn’t know.  We soon learned what it was that made it difficult for people with schizophrenia  to communicate.  We discovered that the general public  are frightened as well as embarrassed to hold a conversation with a person who has a mental illness or an allied disorder.

We learned the importance of speaking slowly and clearly to individuals with schizophrenia.

We learned to make our sentences short and as simple as possible.

My son often said; ‘I don’t always hear a whole sentence because my concentration seems to float in and out. And if there is background noise or  a crowd, it makes me very tense and nervous.My dad saw how I was feeling and took me to a quiet place and sat me down until I felt less threatened.’

We understood that our son needed routine and some kind of structure to his life so we did our best to help guide him there.

i have to admit that there were times when I felt as if I were walking on shattered glass and that was when I found it hard to maintain equilibrium in our home.j

• I had to force myself to keep a smile on my face.
• I found it difficult to remain accepting.
• It was hard for me to remain encouraging.
• I had to make time to listen to him as he could talk about his problems for hours.
• I tried  at all times to treat him with the utmost respect.
• BUT, I did not always succeed.
• There were times when I was critical, gloomy, or argumentative.
• Yet my late husband on the other hand, showed the utmost patience, understanding and unconditional love at all times. He also used humor to deflect difficult situations which was extremely helpful.

 

 

 

PART TWO OF: HOW SHOULD ONE BEHAVE?

Sooner or later when a person has schizophrenia, a crisis will occur. When this happens there are some things That can reduce the oncoming disaster but these were all learned along the way.

The most important lesson learned was that we could not reason with our son when he was psychotic.

We learned to understand his terror by observing his own loss of control.

Of course it was not a great idea for any of us to shout at him or even show a teeny sign of anger irritation or impatience.

It was important for us to all work together toward the same purpose.

I learned that using sarcasm was useless.

My son hated noise so it was advisable to turn off radios, the T V – the dishwasher (if you have one) the washing machine and dryer when he was upset.  The less noise, the better.

We learned not to touch him during an episode and to avoid continuous eye contact.

Sometimes, when I sat down and suggested that he do the same, he did, and then he calmed down slowly. But,sometimes things ended differently.

WHAT WE MISSED OUT IN HIS LIFE …

He was distressed and depressed. A headache caused him to have problems concentrating and then he complained that he was hearing voices. “Voices?” The family chorused. “We can’t hear anything”

He accused the family of setting up microphones in the house to upset him … it wasn’t long before he agreed to visit a psychiatrist, who suggested hospitalization but his parents were unable to talk about his problem and that upset him deeply. He sensed that they found the whole situation shameful, something that he could not grasp. “I have an illness, he thought. But, a brain illness is not accepted the way other illnesses are,  now is it?” In time, the family accepted that this was a physical illness in their son’s brain.

i know that one of the hardest  things to accept about my son’s schizophrenia was what we missed out in his life. We did not see him fulfill his dreams. We did not attend a graduation ceremony. We missed hearing about the work he was doing, the people he was meeting, vacations, and we missed the joy of seeing him fall in love, meet the woman of his choice plus the happiness that was bound to follow.  Slowly but surely, the son that I knew so well, became a stranger – not even a shadow of his former self.. My son, who had once been an athlete, a tennis player, a surfer and an voracious reader, changed into someone else. He became a haunted, unhappy being.

When Doron went to the hospital for the first time, we thought he would enter sick and exit well, or at least, much better. We wondered whether we might have let him down in some way. We stood by and watched him get sucked up into an abyss, into another world, one previously unknown to us. At one of the darkest points in our lives, I remember flopping down onto the edge of our bed and sobbing uncontrollably. My husband was holding me tightly and neither of us knew what to do. He was repeating; “He willl get better, you’ll see. He will. He must.”

Then we joined a support group. I remember the feeling of relief after we had introduced ourselves and realized that for the first time ever, all the people in that room knew how we were feeling. We met every fortnight and learned many coping skills from them … the most helpful thing we learned was: TAKE ONE DAY AT A TIME.

The second;  PARENTS CANNOT CAUSE SCHIZOPHRENIA .

S C H I Z O P H R E N I A  CANNOT BE CAUSED BY ANYTHING PARENTS DO OR DON’T DO.

Why do you tell your story?

             I am not a professional in the field of mental health, so all I can do is tell my story from my point of view and I want  to tell it as it should be told.

• I tell my story to make it more difficult for people to close their eyes as well as their hearts to the mental illness around them. Most of us know someone who has some kind of brain illness.
• I tell my story in order to gain empathy for the people out there who are mentally challenged as well as to let them know that they are not alone.
• I tell my story as I need to try and convince  people of the importance of early intervention.
• If more of us tell our stories, somehow, the professional people out there might listen and believe.
• No politician truly believes that he/she will gain more votes by devoting more time and money to the issue of mental illness. But, maybe that time is NOW.
• I tell my story, the story of one family, but it is actually the story  of millions of families living with mentally ill relatives anywhere in the world from Alaska to Africa.
• So, in my blog, I aim to tell my story in the hope that one day, there will be less stigma toward mentally challenged people in the world. If we all Speak out,  maybe some of the people out there will listen, believe, and even act on our behalf.

READ DAVID’S STORY by Jill Sadowsky.

ORDER from Amazon’s Kindle Store or on Smashwords.

Read: THE LAST CALL by Jill Sadowsky in the HIDDEN LIVES Anthology. Canada’s Brindle and Glass are now promoting this Anthology containing stories on mentally challenged people.

Know what person the disease has, rather than which disease the person has …

 

Have you ever walked along thinking about something pleasant when someone almost bumps into you? Do you whisper because you are afraid to excite that individual or cause him/her to become violent? Do you speak slowly as if he/she were unable to understand you? How about treating that person the way you would treat anyone else instead of as an illness? Snap judgments can be incorrect, you know. There is no way of knowing whether a co-worker, a car mechanic, a lawyer, a cashier, a neighbor or a teacher is dealing with a mental challenge or not and they all deserve to be treated with dignity.

If someone treats you like an ‘option,’ help them narrow their choices by removing yourself from the equation. It’s that simple you know! If we want to show basic human courtesy and respect for human dignity, we have to remain open-minded, curious and willing to get to know people without judging them. This goes a long way in respecting human dignity.

DO YOU KNOW THAT AN OUNCE OF PATIENCE IS WORTH 1,000 WORDS ?