Thinking about my first onset of schizophrenia, which is like God trying to command me through a series of intelligence tests, I realised that I had been too indoctrinated with meritocratic theories since my days in Dunman High School, where I had tests almost every week of school.
In my first onset in Q3, Q4 2006, I had poverty of speech and lack social interaction because I was constantly trying to think through the tests God laid out for me. In conventional talk, I'm leading a double life, or doing two things at one time. Of course I can't respond to conversations.
As to why I ended up like this, it's likely because of my social gatherings with my father and his kind in the coffee shop. I had never considered coffee shops my social place, but in 2006 after doing my online MBA since 2003, he asked me to go there one day with my mother and him.
At the coffee shop, I was trying to understand what was going on around me as my father sat with other people and seemed to socialise with them, drinking and smoking. I might have had a drink, which I usually do not, and now certainly don't.
I was faced with a barrage of non verbal communications and ways of speech I do not quite comprehend at that time. The information processing load perturbs my cortical neural complexity, which adjusted in the wrong way, into a Godlike world of intelligence tests, trying to remember and reinterpret all the sounds and images hammering me.
From then on, I thought that that was the truthful and right way of living, reinterpreting Godlike sounds to walk and try to do various things. Even to the point of running away from IMH (Institute of Mental Health) when I was brought there eventually by my parents, and living outside for 3 days without food and sleep. I did drink some tap water once, and passed urine once, which the Godly sounds and images did not instruct me to do. This drinking and urination caused a perturbation in the environment which I can feel at that time. I never defecated in those 3 days.
Eventually, all that walking and doing became incomprehensible because I never became better at the tests I was doing. So, I decided to end it and take a taxi home. I took two taxis, each bringing me a part of the way home. This was because the first taxi driver, whose taxi I got into in Yishun, probably thought he was driving a mad man. This is when the inexplicable happened. My spectacles vanished from my face when I tried to look for my second taxi in Kaki Bukit.
When my spectacles disappeared, I checked all over my body and clothes for the missing spectacles, but could not find it. So I flagged down a taxi with blurred vision. As the taxi neared my flat in Bedok South, I could feel a bulge suddenly resolved/formed itself in the left pocket of my bermudas while I'm seated in the taxi. I checked it and found my spectacles there.
Throughout my endeavours to follow God's messages, I remembered seeing the effects of bloatedness in my hands, which surprised me because I hadn't eaten or slept and was weary from all the walking and actions performed. I thought I should become thinner.
However, after I reached home at night and ate some food, urinated, and slept for a night, I woke up the next morning to see my hands shriveled. This is truly an example of reality distortion, where basic reality is twisted. This and the disappearance-reappearance of my spectacles reminds me of the 1999 movie "The Matrix". It also reminds me of a Buddhist saying: the world is an illusion, and here I mean it literally. Our physical world seems to be an illusion.
One point to note: I was not a Christian while undergoing all these Godly tests, I was an Agnostic. I became Christian much later in 2012 after recovering from my depression and first relapse of schizophrenia which had led to my suicide attempt.
After my inexplicable experiences, I went to stay at IMH for several days from 5 to 10 Feb 2007. I was prescribed Risperidone 3 mg, Fluvoxamine 50mg taken every night, and diazepam 10mg when necessary. There, I met another patient who is a Buddhist and likes to play Buddhist chants on his handheld device. He helped me to start talking again and soon, I began to write down my recovery wishes/plan for a future I can see.
After I left IMH, I went back to doing my MBA, fully aware that time has been lost. After some time, I decided that I was well and suggested not taking medicine, which my IMH psychiatrist agreed with without warning me that a relapse is possible and could lead to complications such as suicide attempts.
At about the same time, an insidious thought appeared in my mind, which showed that I may not have fully recovered. The thought made me wary of exposing my mind to the world, so I ended up not sharing when I should be sharing in my online MBA course. I literally submitted blank sheets most of the time. Hence, my increased awareness of my "privacy" caused me to fail all my remaining modules in the MBA course. My overall score was lowered as a result, so I did not acquire my MBA degree. I took the full 5 years to complete my MBA course, starting in 2003 and ending in 2008.
My deluded thinking also affected me when I found work between 2007 and 2011, causing me to believe that I was not wanted at work in one case, and causing me to believe that my colleagues wanted to chase me away in another case. In both cases, I left after about 9 months to one year in the job.
References:
- Avi Peled, NeuroAnalysis - Bridging the Gap between Neuroscience, Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry, 2008
In my first onset in Q3, Q4 2006, I had poverty of speech and lack social interaction because I was constantly trying to think through the tests God laid out for me. In conventional talk, I'm leading a double life, or doing two things at one time. Of course I can't respond to conversations.
As to why I ended up like this, it's likely because of my social gatherings with my father and his kind in the coffee shop. I had never considered coffee shops my social place, but in 2006 after doing my online MBA since 2003, he asked me to go there one day with my mother and him.
At the coffee shop, I was trying to understand what was going on around me as my father sat with other people and seemed to socialise with them, drinking and smoking. I might have had a drink, which I usually do not, and now certainly don't.
I was faced with a barrage of non verbal communications and ways of speech I do not quite comprehend at that time. The information processing load perturbs my cortical neural complexity, which adjusted in the wrong way, into a Godlike world of intelligence tests, trying to remember and reinterpret all the sounds and images hammering me.
From then on, I thought that that was the truthful and right way of living, reinterpreting Godlike sounds to walk and try to do various things. Even to the point of running away from IMH (Institute of Mental Health) when I was brought there eventually by my parents, and living outside for 3 days without food and sleep. I did drink some tap water once, and passed urine once, which the Godly sounds and images did not instruct me to do. This drinking and urination caused a perturbation in the environment which I can feel at that time. I never defecated in those 3 days.
Eventually, all that walking and doing became incomprehensible because I never became better at the tests I was doing. So, I decided to end it and take a taxi home. I took two taxis, each bringing me a part of the way home. This was because the first taxi driver, whose taxi I got into in Yishun, probably thought he was driving a mad man. This is when the inexplicable happened. My spectacles vanished from my face when I tried to look for my second taxi in Kaki Bukit.
When my spectacles disappeared, I checked all over my body and clothes for the missing spectacles, but could not find it. So I flagged down a taxi with blurred vision. As the taxi neared my flat in Bedok South, I could feel a bulge suddenly resolved/formed itself in the left pocket of my bermudas while I'm seated in the taxi. I checked it and found my spectacles there.
Throughout my endeavours to follow God's messages, I remembered seeing the effects of bloatedness in my hands, which surprised me because I hadn't eaten or slept and was weary from all the walking and actions performed. I thought I should become thinner.
However, after I reached home at night and ate some food, urinated, and slept for a night, I woke up the next morning to see my hands shriveled. This is truly an example of reality distortion, where basic reality is twisted. This and the disappearance-reappearance of my spectacles reminds me of the 1999 movie "The Matrix". It also reminds me of a Buddhist saying: the world is an illusion, and here I mean it literally. Our physical world seems to be an illusion.
One point to note: I was not a Christian while undergoing all these Godly tests, I was an Agnostic. I became Christian much later in 2012 after recovering from my depression and first relapse of schizophrenia which had led to my suicide attempt.
After my inexplicable experiences, I went to stay at IMH for several days from 5 to 10 Feb 2007. I was prescribed Risperidone 3 mg, Fluvoxamine 50mg taken every night, and diazepam 10mg when necessary. There, I met another patient who is a Buddhist and likes to play Buddhist chants on his handheld device. He helped me to start talking again and soon, I began to write down my recovery wishes/plan for a future I can see.
After I left IMH, I went back to doing my MBA, fully aware that time has been lost. After some time, I decided that I was well and suggested not taking medicine, which my IMH psychiatrist agreed with without warning me that a relapse is possible and could lead to complications such as suicide attempts.
At about the same time, an insidious thought appeared in my mind, which showed that I may not have fully recovered. The thought made me wary of exposing my mind to the world, so I ended up not sharing when I should be sharing in my online MBA course. I literally submitted blank sheets most of the time. Hence, my increased awareness of my "privacy" caused me to fail all my remaining modules in the MBA course. My overall score was lowered as a result, so I did not acquire my MBA degree. I took the full 5 years to complete my MBA course, starting in 2003 and ending in 2008.
My deluded thinking also affected me when I found work between 2007 and 2011, causing me to believe that I was not wanted at work in one case, and causing me to believe that my colleagues wanted to chase me away in another case. In both cases, I left after about 9 months to one year in the job.
References:
- Avi Peled, NeuroAnalysis - Bridging the Gap between Neuroscience, Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry, 2008