State of Mind

The SZ brain

Schizophrenics use 30% of their brain as opposed to 10% used by the normal people. This is a known fact. This accounts for all the thoughts, perceptions, hallucinations, delusions....Sometimes these thoughts overwhelm us, they keep on repeating, keep on coming, and it taxes the brain, the system gets overloaded just like a computer system. Their is not enough memory to save the inputs (internal in our case) and process them. The system has to stop functioning, the system will hang up and eventually crash. And this results in catatonia. That is the reason why I believe we go catatonic most of the times when we are aware of our own illness and trying to control the symptoms. The brain should know how much external input it can take so that it doesn't start generating a sequence of its own internal inputs in order to stop functioning. That's what I try to do. I try not to think too much. If the thoughts come, I repeat a mantram, the thought immediately vanishes and I stop repeating the mantram so as it doesn't become the recurring thought that overloads the system. This is why I mentioned earlier that I'm afraid to think. Dealing with most schizophrenics expectations is difficult just because they try to do too much with too much external input than they can handle, than their memory can handle. That is the reason they also fail in their tasks and become depressed. The only way out of this viscious circle is to get a balance between the amount of input you can take, taking only that much input, and then going off to sleep if not ending up in a catatonic state. In case you need to function for long hours, this is where my cigarettes come in handy. They help in controlling the symptoms by helping me get the thoughts-in-order-and-non-repeating. This is how cigarettes help in controlling the symptoms of schizophrenia to some extent. I advise that they should be taken only when extremely necessary to function as they otherwise cause more harm than cure. Also, they help by controlling the stress or anxiety that might aggravate the symptoms of schizophrenia. So keep smiling and keep functioning. And let go, let go of all the expectations, of all those thoughts, they will come, slowly you will do what you want to do, slowly you will be able to function, and slowly the destiny will present itself.