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    Surviving Psychosis
    Surviving Psychosis
    Surviving Psychosis
    Ebook383 pages6 hours

    Surviving Psychosis

    By Travis Breeding

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    About this ebook

    After nearly losing his life to mental illness Travis is now triumphing with autism. He explains how schizophrenia and psychosis impacted his life and nearly caused him to kill himself. It took years to find the right medication to get Travis on the right track but now he is sharing his story of how he overcame so much adversity in order to be the successful person he is today with a good job. Travis could have folded his cards and gave up on life and even though he almost did numerous times for some reason deep down he never really wanted to kill himself and he was not going to let the voices destroy him. Learn how Travis copes with seeing and hearing dragons breathing fire at him as well as talking to imaginary friends. There are special messages Travis gets from television characters in movies and television shows that other people do not get. Travis must work hard to survive the psychotic episodes and hope that the medication keeps him safe. Travis has had numerous close calls and accidents where he was told by the dragons to poor gasoline on himself to light himself on fire to burn as a punishment for being autistic. This is an emotional story that will completely connect you to someone with schizophrenia and allow you to see, think, and feel what it is like to have schizophrenia.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBreeding Publishing
    Release dateMay 29, 2017
    ISBN9781370101931
    Surviving Psychosis
    Author

    Travis Breeding

    Travis is an author from Huntington Indiana how enjoys entertaining and educating through words. He enjoys telling a story and taking it from his mind to paper. He has authored several books on autism, mental illness, schizophrenia, and disability issues. He continues to write about those issues but also explores some fiction writing as well. Travis has a loving family and enjoys spending time with friends and family. He loves to play bingo and meet new people. One day Travis hopes to start a family of his own and give them so much love. Travis would like to thank his readers for supporting him on his journey of becoming an author. He could not have done it without you. If you would like to get in touch with Travis please email him at tbreedauthoratgmaildotcom,

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      Book preview

      Surviving Psychosis - Travis Breeding

      Schizophrenia Voices of Self Destruction

      Travis Breeding

      Published by Travis Breeding at Smashwords

      Copyright 2017 Travis Breeding

      All Rights Reserved

      Contents

      Chapter One: Schizophrenia Voices of Self Destruction

      Chapter Two: College and Hallucinations

      Chapter Three: Spring Break Psychotic Episode

      Chapter Four: A New Beginning

      Chapter Five: Employment that Works for Me

      Chapter Six: Why is the Television Talking to Me?

      Chapter Seven: Paying My Bill to Live

      Chapter Eight: Autism, Schizophrenia, and Dating

      About the Author

      Chapter One. Schizophrenia Voices of Self Destruction

      Why are they always yelling and screaming at me? Why are they telling me I have to punish myself? Why do they tell me that everyone thinks I am bad person? It does not matter where I go I always hear these voices that are yelling at me. Sometimes they whisper but most of the time it is someone yelling and screaming at me telling me I have to punish myself because I have autism.

      Everywhere I go the voices follow. They go shopping with me for groceries. Sometimes the groceries start talking to me and telling me that I am not good enough to eat them. They say I do not deserve to have real food because I have autism and the food insists that I should punish myself because I have autism.

      No one would ever believe me before when I was trying to tell them the things that were happening in my brain. It is like my brain is a video game that plays constantly. It interferes with everything my life and makes it so I cannot enjoy doing things that I used to do before I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

      It is very hard for me when I do get a job. I am very high functioning when it comes to autism but the voices and hallucinations are so self-destructive.

      Imagine a world where when you first woke up in the morning to get ready for work you had voices telling you that your coworkers wanted to kill you because you have autism.

      I never understood why other people could not understand me when I was trying to explain to them what was happening. No one wanted to listen and they would never believe me when I was trying to tell them the things people were saying about me.

      I remember a day and time when I was normal and did not hear these voices or have delusions or hallucinations and it was peaceful. There was a time where I could enjoy life without obsessing over the voices that I hear.

      I use to play video games. Mainly sports games. I was very interested in basketball and football and I even used to sit and watch all of the college and professional games with my father and I really enjoyed it.

      It has become increasingly difficult for me to watch television because it is like everyone has a message for me and all of the characters on television start talking to me. They tell me that I need to punish myself because I have autism and recommend was of self-harming myself and I try so hard to ignore them because I know that they are wrong.

      I am just as good as other people so I do not understand why voices tell me that I am no good and not able to be a real person. The voices always tell me that I am a fake person and will never be neurotypical.

      I am very clingy to my neurotypical friends because if I lose them then there is no way I can be a real person. The only way I am a real person is through them. If I did not have my neurotypical friends then I would just be a fake person that no one knew even existed.

      I first started noticing the voices when I was 19 years old. That is when I immediately began going to counseling because the voices started telling me that I was not as good as other people and I needed to be punished because I was less than others. I started hearing these voices when I was in the college classroom.

      It was right after high school that I first had problems. I had a lot of familiarity and comfortability at my job in high school. I had the job when I was a freshman and high school and I was fully 100 percent functional in high school. I never heard any voices or had any delusions or hallucinations in high school. It was only after high school and when I first entered college at Indiana University that I began hearing voices.

      When I first went to Indiana Univesity I did not live on campus because I had a bed wetting issue that kept me from living with other students. Yes I was now a college freshman and I did not have any experience staying overnight away from my parents because of my bedwetting issue.

      I use to have to have the sheets changed on my bed every night because I was wetting the bed every night of the week. This frustrated my parents and they took me to a doctor to try and figure out why I was having a bedwetting issue. My parents tried their best to help me and even went above and beyond to get me into Indiana University and the school of music there.

      School had become difficult for me by the time I was in middle school. I would later find out the reason why things began to become difficult for me both socially and academically was that I had Asperger Syndrome.

      I would not officially be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome until I was 22 years old.

      Everything started changing when I first entered middle school. I started noticing that other kids did not just want to run around on the playground anymore. I began to notice that the other kids starting just hanging out having conversations with one another. I never did understand why kids wanted to talk gossip about other people all the time but I think even adults do that sometimes too.

      I did not understand the importance of being cool like other kids did and they were much cooler than I was because I was just the different kid who seemed to have no friends.

      I did have one good friend in elementary school named Eric who was my best friend and we did everything together in elementary school.

      I was devastated in fifth grade when he told me his father had accepted a job with a company in Iowa which is in a whole different state than Indiana is.

      Eric was a popular kid so I had a lot of friends because there were a lot of people who knew him. I did not know how to make friends. Eric just fell into my lap. I found out that it was easy to make friends in preschool and kindergarten and I learned that it was even more difficult to make and maintain a friendship in middle school.

      When Eric moved away in fifth grade I was so devastated and could not stop crying. I needed Eric to be at school with me to help me understand all of the social happenings that were going on all throughout the school day. My parents knew that Eric leaving was hard on me and so did my teacher Mrs. Ross. She really looked out for me and helped to ensure that I was doing okay. She had arranged for another kid named Austin to kind of lookout for me and make sure that I was connected and building friendships.

      Another thing that really began to bother me in middle school was that I had a different teacher for every subject. I was used to having one teacher for an entire day that taught me about every single subject that I had to take and I could learn my teachers teaching style very easily because after one or two months of school I became very familiar with her routine and teaching style.

      Now I had eight different teachers all throughout the school day and we started to switch classes. We switched classes every 40 minutes or so and it was very annoying to me because I did not enjoy the hallway during passing periods.

      Why did the other kids feel the need to line up and hangout around my locker and talk? All I could hear during the passing period was other children screaming, yelling, and laughing. It really bothered me because it was just so much to take in and it was a severe sensory overload.

      In middle school teachers weren’t as patient with explaining things either. I was always the good kid and I never got in trouble and I also never really spoke up. So when I was having problems understanding something I just left it go and did not bring up the fact that I did not understand a concept.

      I was the quiet socially awkward kid with no friends in middle school. I did not know how to reach out to the other children and connect with them and it seemed like whenever I began trying to reach out to them they began to push me away and that really bothered me because I just wanted to be a real person like they were and I could tell that they were real and had real friends.

      I did have some imaginary friends when I was in middle school and in high school but they were nowhere close to the kind of things I have experienced after high school and into my college and adult years. The hallucinations and delusions now are much more intense and severe and have me doing crazy things all the time because I am paranoid other people are out to get me or hurt me.

      It is hard for me to fall asleep at night because I am afraid someone is going to kill me in my sleep. I try to sleep with one eye open but that does not always work. I do take some medications that make me sleepy at night.

      I have found that medications for schizophrenia tend to make me very sleepy. I think that is probably because they slow the brain down and keep it from misfiring sometimes.

      When I first got to Indiana University I was so excited to be a part of the school of music at IU. It was one of the best music schools in the country and I had been accepted into the school of music to study under some of the best teachers there.

      I played trombone all throughout middle and high school. The trombone was my friend and my special interest. It was hard to connect with the other kids so I remember relying on my trombone to help me through some tough times in school. When I started to feel sad because I thought other kids were out socializing or playing with each other and I was stuck at home doing nothing because I was a loser I picked up my trombone and started playing it because it brought comfort to me and made it easier to cope with the isolation, depression, and loneliness.

      I played trombone so much in high school the other kids made fun of me out of jealousy. I did not realize the other kids were making fun of me out of jealousy until I was older and someone explained it to me that way. I just thought they were bullying me because I was different than they were.

      Music helped get me through middle and high school so it made since that I was pursing music as a career. I had dreams of being either a high school band director or performing professionally on the trombone. I had a lot of ambitious goals when I was younger. I studied music very hard because I wanted to be the best player and the best teacher.

      When I first got to Indiana University I immediately realized just how big it was. There were more than 60,000 students who were enrolled in the university and that was a lot of kids in my opinion.

      I graduated from a high school that had about 2,000 kids between all four grades and now they were trying to multiply and grow up to 60,000 kids. I would I ever make any new friends because there were so many people.

      My parents helped me get an off campus apartment down in Bloomington where Indiana University is located because they wanted to make sure that I did not get put in a dorm where other college boys would make fun of me because of my bedwetting issue.

      I remember my parents had to go before a special board of directors at the university just to make it so I could stay in my own off campus apartment. They had to get special permission because all freshman are required to live on campus.

      I had a nice apartment in Bloomington and I loved it. I finished up working back home over the summer and was all ready to head out to Bloomington to begin my college career by the end of August.

      Everything was fine until it was time to start classes. I was taking primarily music classes but there were so many talented musicians on campus that I immediately felt overwhelmed. I remember when I tried to audition for the school of music. When you audition you have to play a jury in front of the professors of your particular instrument. The trombone studio had 3 professors teaching trombone at that time and I had to play in front of all of them.

      It was weird because in high school I never used to get nervous at all because I was the best player. When I got to Indiana University there were so many good players there that I was probably the worst player in the school as a freshman.

      I started the year with high hopes of making the top orchestra and playing principal trombone for the top orchestra and when I auditioned and did not make the top orchestra I felt crushed and devastated.

      How did I go from being one of the best players in high school to being one of the worst players in college?

      I remember being stuck on that exact that and obsessing over it. That first week of classes at Indiana University in Bloomington seemed like a month because I was so upset and anxious over the orchestra thing.

      This was the first time where I really began to notice having trouble with concentration. Not only did I lose my ability to concentrate and take things in during class but I lost all motivation. By the end of the first week of classes I was so worn out that I just wanted to get away and go back home for the weekend and stay with my family. I felt so overwhelmed with my first week of classes and knew that I was in over my head but I had to go back and keep trying because my parents had worked so hard to get me into that university anityd the school of music.

      That weekend I did not mention anything about my week because I did not want to upset or hurt my parents. I took some time to relax and was still trying to figure out why I was hearing voices saying I was not good enough to be at Indiana University. The voices went away briefly as I returned home for the weekend but when the weekend was over and I started driving back to Indiana University I kept hearing voices telling me to turn around and go back home because people at Indiana University wanted to hurt me.

      I tried hard not to listen to the voices and at that time in my life I could still block them out. The more I tried to block them out the louder they became and I just continued to try and ignore them so that I could return to my apartment in Bloomington and go back to school the next week.

      I remember feeling anxious and scared on the drive back to Bloomington and I was worried that the other students would not like me and were out to get me. I thought all of the other students were plotting together along with all of my professors to kill me and this scared me. This made me feel frightened for my life just by waking up and going to school.

      I tried to calm myself down and focus but at that time I did not have any diagnosis and was not taking any medications or anything like that so the only thing I could do is try to talk back to the voices and tell them they were wrong.

      By this point I was so lost and confused that I did not even wake up on time or go back to classes. I spent an entire week, the second week of classes at IU locked inside my apartment because I was afraid that if I opened the door and went outside someone was going to be there to hurt or kill me.

      I spent a lot of time thinking that week trying to understand why I was having so much trouble. I must have wet the bed five or more times per night because my pants were completely saturated every morning when I woke up.

      At this point I knew that I could not continue with school at Indiana University and I knew I could never set foot on campus again because if I were to set foot on campus then someone would be there trying to hurt me or kill me. I was afraid for my life and I could not wait for Friday to get here so that I could go back home and see my family.

      As Friday approached I was beginning to become anxious about how I would tell my parents I could not go back to Indiana University. I did not know how I was going to tell them I was a failure and could not go to college. I thought I would just go to another school or another college or university. I thought that if I went somewhere else maybe the other kids would like me and want me to be there in school with them. I kept trying to tell myself positive thoughts and I really tried to get my mind away from all of the negative voices I was hearing about myself but the more I tried the louder the voices screamed. I knew I could not compete with the voices so I had no choice but to just sit and listen and allow them to say all of these bad things about me.

      I spent the whole weekend at home in my bedroom and I kept contemplating how I was going to tell my parents that I could not go back to Indiana University. My parents worked so hard and went above and beyond the call of duty as parents to get me into Indiana University and I had let them down. I did not want to tell them because I did not want to disappoint them.

      Sunday night had come and it was time for me to get ready to leave home and head back to Indiana University in Bloomington and I still could not tell my parents that I could not go back. I was too scared that they would become upset at me and hate me like the voices kept telling me they would so I just got in the car and took the three hour drive back down to Bloomington where I would stay in my apartment hiding all week if I were to stay in Bloomington.

      I began to get very anxious as I returned to Bloomington and was scared that I was going to get hurt or killed. I got out of the car and ran fast to my apartment and shut and locked the door because I thought someone might be following me.

      After spending a few hours by myself in my apartment I could not take it anymore. I started sobbing and picked up the phone and called my mom explaining to her that I could not stay at Indiana University because all of the students and professors were conspiring against me trying to hurt or kill me. I told my mom I just needed to come home and I explained to her that I had a game plan all set up for when I got home.

      I really had not thought much about a game plan but I knew that I had a chance to go to Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana because I knew the band director there. Mom and dad agreed that I should come home because I had already missed a week and a half of classes anyways.

      That first semester of college was a complete failure because I paid a lot of money to take those classes and I was not even able to make it through a full week of them. I hung up the phone with mom letting her know that I would be heading home and I felt so relieved and the anxiousness went away. I felt better just knowing that I was about to come home and feel safe again.

      Little did I know the same problems, voices, hallucinations, and delusions would follow me and haunt me everywhere I went; I was about to begin a new chapter in my life and I hoped that it would be a more successful experience. I had hopes that when I returned home and started school at Indiana Wesleyan things would be so much easier for me. Would they get easier?

      Chapter Two College and Hallucinations

      I was excited to begin my new future at Indiana Wesleyan University. Indiana University was too overwhelming for me but I thought coming to a smaller Christian University would be a better fit for me. I knew the band director at Indiana Wesleyan University so getting acquainted with people in the music department was easy for me.

      The experience at Indiana Wesleyan University did not go as I expected it to, however. Mr. Flanagin was the director of bands at Indiana Wesleyan. He was also my band teacher in middle school so we knew each other pretty well. He was not aware of the seriousness of the problems I was having, however, he knew that I had felt overwhelmed at Indiana University which was his alma mater. He welcomed me along with the students to Indiana Wesleyan.

      At first the other kids at Indiana Wesleyan University liked me and thought I was a good person. They were excited because Mr. Flanagin had been talking me up to them saying that there was an amazing trombone player coming to school and the trombone section was going to improve and get a lot better.

      Everyone was excited. I was still very anxious, scared, and shy so it took me a few weeks before I felt comfortable warming up to the students there.

      I tried to form friendships there and I did manage to find a few friends there. I think it was easier for me to make friends there because Mr. Flanagin was there.

      I did not have a problem with meeting new people because I was involved in the wind ensemble and met many new people that way. The problem started to happen when I found someone that I took interest in and wanted to be friends with them. This was particularly a problem with girls that I wanted to be friends with.

      I did not have any understanding of how to act around girls so it was difficult for me when I started having all kinds of social issues and miscues when I was trying to approach a new girl to talk to.

      I have a very hard time with social boundaries because of the autism that I have. Unwritten social rules and boundaries are extremely challenging for me to follow. Because I tend to overstep a lot of unwritten social boundaries girls often complain about me and excuse me of stalking.

      This would eventually become a problem at Indiana Wesleyan University and as soon as it became a problem the voices and hallucinations all came back in full force.

      At a private school like Indiana Wesleyan University there is an office called student development that students can go and complain about issues they are having. It reminds me of high school. At a public University there is no office like that where people can go and complain.

      Eventually I was asked to leave Indiana University voluntarily because I had become a problem and girls did not feel comfortable with me being there.

      I remember feeling crushed because I would never purposely try and stalk anyone or hurt anyone and I found out the girls thought that I might hurt them because I was stalking them and coming on too strong. To me texting them multiple times per day just meant that I liked them and to them it met that I was stalking them.

      This would be a great time to bring up the concept of social thinking and discuss how everyone’s social thinking skills are different from one another.

      Social thinking is are ability to understand the contexts of all social situations. If we do not understand the context or take things out of context it can create serious issues in all social relationships.

      There are always two parts to social skills.

      1 The social skill it’s self.

      2 The social thinking component.

      In my experience with autism the social thinking component is really what I struggle with the most. Learning how to socialize and talk to people is easy but decoding what they are saying is very challenging and takes social thinking skills that include reading body language and non-verbal communication; reading facial expressions, reading hand gestures, and even reading the tone of a person’s voice.

      It is important we put these social thinking skills to use when forming social relationships.

      I was a master at talking to people and getting to know them. I was a great conversationalist but I’ve never been a good social thinker and that is what I am working on in my life socially right now.

      There was one thing that happened at Indiana Wesleyan University that has had a lasting impact on my life and it might even contribute to some of my hallucinations. To this day I have a hard time going to church because when I was at Indiana Wesleyan University girls told me that they could not date me because God told them they could not date me because I was different.

      This was very confusing to me because I had always learned that Jesus and God love all the children of the world; red and yellow; black and white.

      Why would God tell girls at Indiana Wesleyan that they were not allowed to date me because I was different? This devastated me and has had a long lasting impact on my life.

      To this day I struggle with going to church. I really want to go but I feel like Christians hate me because I am different and I am afraid if I set foot in a church God will punish me because I have autism.

      Whenever I think about going to church I start hearing voices saying that I am not good enough to go to church and visit God’s house. When I was younger I used to go to church every Sunday because I played trombone on the worship team. Playing trombone on the worship team was a great experience for me because it allowed me to serve God and do what I loved doing as well as lead others to God through my worshiping.

      When I was asked to leave Indiana Wesleyan I found out the main reason they asked me to take a medical withdraw and leave campus voluntarily was because they did not want to be mean and kick me out but they told me the only way they would not kick me out is if I left voluntarily. I later learned that a lot of parents who had children at Indiana Wesleyan University called and threatened to pull their children out of school and stop donating money to the University unless I was suspended and kicked out.

      When I was kicked out I was asked never to come back and told that the police would be called if I came back because the girls thought I was a stalker. It hurt my feelings that people thought I was a stalker because I was trying really hard to make friends in normal ways but it just did not work.

      It is hard to accept the reality that I hurt others because I am being who I am and interacting with people the way I know how. I think all of the social rejection that I have experienced over the past several years also leads to a little bit of what my hallucinations are about. I have a lot of hallucinations that are about social stuff and autism. I have a lot of hallucinations and delusions that I am not wanted anywhere and must be punished because I have autism. All of these hallucinations and delusions are trying to tell me that I am a bad person just because I have autism.

      It was at the same time I was being asked to leave Indiana Wesleyan University because of my disorder that I was put in the hospital because I felt like hurting myself. In fact I was actually asked to withdraw from school while I was in the hospital. It was that hospital visit that led to me being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism.

      The frustrating thing about being asked to leave Indiana Wesleyan University was that I had a disorder but did not even know I had a disorder. It was a social disorder and that was the main reason that I was having all kinds of problems in these social situations with people. I did not understand unwritten social rules that neurotypicals automatically understand. If I would have at least known that I was on the autism spectrum there is a good chance that I could have gotten a lot of supports in place to help me learn those social skills and then I would not have been bothering everyone anymore because I would now how to behave better socially.

      I wish I could have been diagnosed with autism as a younger child so that I had a chance to learn some social skills as a teenager. I felt really behind my peers in college because my interests were all different than the other kids and my social skills in terms of social thinking were not as advanced as theirs either.

      I suffer from a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder from my days at Indiana Wesleyan University. I still hear voices from time to time saying God hates me because of what those girls said about God not wanting them to date me. I feel so much emotional pain from my experiences at Indiana Wesleyan University.

      I am working hard every day to overcome the challenges of Indiana Wesleyan. In the next couple chapters I will talk about how I went on wind ensemble tours while I was at Indiana Wesleyan and discuss some of the social challenges that I faced when I was on tour with a Christian wind ensemble as well as share what some of the hallucinations on tour were about.

      Chapter Three Spring Tour Psychotic Episode

      In the spring of 2005 I was involved in the Indiana Wesleyan University wind ensemble. Each spring during the university’s spring break the wind ensemble went on tour to play at a lot of different churches.

      In 2005 that tour was too go up north to Minnesota and Wisconsin. We traveled all over the upper Midwest that spring.

      It was college spring break which meant it was the first week of March and it was still freezing cold outside up in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

      I was so stressed out about going on tour because it meant that I would be spending the night with someone else and staying at someone’s house that I did not know anything about. The reason why it stressed me out so much is because of my bed-wetting issue.

      I was scared to death that I would wet the bed and have my fellow wind ensemble members make fun of me. That was the last thing I wanted to do and I did not want to ruin someone’s sheets or bed spread.

      My parents were able to get some depends for me and I was able to have some extra added protection so at least if I did have an accident there was less of a chance that I would ruin their sheets or bedspread.

      Luckily I was at a Christian University and there were some decent people that work there and go to school there. While I did have many struggles with situations outside of the wind ensemble at Indiana Wesleyan there were some great kids in the wind ensemble that I enjoyed hanging out with and talking to. I did not really ever get to hang-out with anyone other than a group outing with the wind ensemble. However, I enjoyed the spring tours when I spent the night at host homes

      I remember that I felt so much anxiety during the week leading up to the trip because I was scared that I

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