The Demons of Schizophrenia

Recently found a video of Jerry being interviewed, he looked familiar, as I have no doubt watched an interview of him in my past. I’ve just completed Jerry’s & Sherry’s book and will forward it to my former talk therapist at our local VA hospital.

Have had both shattering childhood sex slave abuse and military experiences involving my death, and a surgery recovery that went bad as I had to be revived six times. Aside from the typical abusive father scenario, the childhood death was an out of body experience that I called dissociation. Where my awareness went to in spirit, was a place of darkness and safety while my physical body was being ravaged and overdosed with two injections of heroin from my babysitter. The generalized hypoxia turned my skin blue causing my attackers to give me their version of CPR and then they finished raping and photographing me. The second death occurred in the military where I was thrown from a vehicle in training breaking my neck, back and injuring my brain. This time out of body I met guides and seeing my physical body from afar, watched a woman with blue skin kneel down and fix something in my neck/head area before they told me I was going back. The third was after surgery stopping breathing six times. Each time appearing in a huge grassy field with a forest, a stream and meeting with spirit family members. Every time the nurses revived me, I was thrust back into my physical body, hearing the loud alarms going off next to my bed. Frustrated that I was back here again and not allowed to stay ‘Home.’

Between deaths 2 & 3 I had placed myself into talk therapy for depression where they also found PTSD, dyslexia and autism spectrum disorder. I have been told since my childhood traumas that I was a negative thinker achieving low scores and grades everywhere with the exception of gym class. I have rarely heard voices in my head or outside of me, but when I have, they were always benevolent and brief. Being a musician and interviewing other musicians, I have found that most of us hear music in our heads. This is why I was able to teach myself guitar, piano and drums as I would simply match what I heard in my head into the instrument, until I had a whole song to play for others. My first documented guitar experience was at three years old when my uncle came home from Vietnam and gave me a music lesson. I still have this photograph and turning professional by age 21.

Moving across the USA frequently and for continuity of treatment I had to find new talk therapists each time. All totaling about 12 years of everything you can think of; CBT, EMDR. EFT, vivo exposure, meditation, journaling, exercise, 5 triathlons, Tai Chi, Yoga, self employment, 4 college degrees, reiki certification, psychics, shamans, Arizona sweat lodge, books, yada, yada, yada… I thought I had done it all. Then I read Jerry’s book. In about 2018 I had had my last talk therapy session that included my last EMDR session as well. I was done for now but still felt that something else was going on and then it started happening, a phenomenon that I called Ground Hog Day after the movie with Bill Murray. I could have also called it The Edge of Tomorrow after the Tom Cruise movie that I have seen countless times as well. My sleep patterns changed, my pain levels went up, and the levee broke. I began to have a deluge of daily intrusive thoughts. No nightmares, no night sweats, no voices, just negative thoughts. I was forced to revisit every single perceived negative interaction that I had had long since forgotten about, to include fresh ones. I could not make it stop. Over and over, again and again, every day. Due to injuries, employment difficulties and 17 years of poverty I was placed on disability so I figured that I had too much time on my hands and my mind simply needed a hobby. But since my spinal fusion surgery and learning how to walk again, my legs do not work the same and I have not been able to do much exercising beyond swimming and very slow walking; the thoughts persisted. I recall my early fascination with the Carlos Casteneda series how his benefactor shaman don Juan Matus shared we all need to go through several recapitulations during our lives so I thought this was mine.

Day after day, hour by hour for one and a half years (18 months) I endured this barrage of negativity. The best that I could do was to isolate myself, to buckle in for this hell ride. I already knew that the high level of pain that I felt physically changed the way in which I interacted with people, so add in these intrusive thoughts and I was fucked. I had the time to fight back but I needed to do it alone. I would grocery shop at night, I would swim at night, walk at night to avoid contact with others. I almost dropped Jerry’s book when I read that his conclusion, my conclusion, his patients conclusions were that to combat these negative intrusive thoughts or voices, that we had to find forgiveness. This is exactly what I was doing with great difficulty I might add as my panic attacks had returned. For a period in my life around the early 2000’s, I had hundreds of panic attacks where I thought I was dying. This began right after I became clean and sober and have stayed this way for 19 years now, with no relapses. Somehow I eventually figured out through cognition that I was burying negative thoughts and needed to bring each one into view and deal with them. Most of them were simple and I found that as long as I did not bury or push aside those thoughts, that I could resolve them one by one until that awful triggering of adrenaline responses finally was back under my control. My thoughts were creating an unneeded release of adrenaline making me feel like I was thrust into the middle of a triathlon when in fact I was safely tucked into in my recliner in my living room. Was this my first recapitulation early in the new millennium, and my second being in 2018?

Finding forgiveness for my attackers is hard. Finding forgiveness for the mean and nasty people in my life is where I needed to start and did. On this day in March 2020, under quarantine with the planet for a novel influenza virus that the media is over-hyping, I am thankful that Jerry’s book arrived before the USPS shuts down too, along with the internet. I read the book in three sittings. I am grateful that I now have the proper tools to ask my guardian angels to keep the archons at bay, which they have, but the archons still sneak back in so I use persistence in breaking ‘my habits’ of allowing thoughts that are not mine to have control. What a relief. This is my cathartic moment. I am not religious at all but I am very aware of Prime Source Creator, the angels and guides that I have met and talked with and my ability to shut off the intrusive thoughts with my free will of choice to ask for help.

Another fascinating piece! Bravo!