Hello everyone!
I really feel overwhelmed with the mental problems that my family members are having, and things seem to have taken a big nosedive these past few weeks (though it is entirely possible that those things had been going downhill slowly and steadily, and perhaps I only recently started to recognize the severity of the situation, I don't know). I am very glad that I have found this website populated by supportive, caring people; since I unfortunately feel that l have nobody to talk to about these issues at the moment.
My primary source of trouble is my mom's condition, actually. She had always been a slightly paranoid person, but I have started to suspect that her paranoia is not the harmless everyday kind of paranoia, but probably the kind that warrants a medical diagnosis. To be specific, she thinks that people living in our neighborhood are running an organized crime gang, and she keeps generating ever new and mind-blowing conspiracy theories based on this template. Like, she would refuse to go into the basement, saying that a special recording device had been installed there by our neighbours, and this device would secretly take her photos and somehow make her "look naked," and then the gang members would blackmail her into joining their gang by using these naked photos, stuff like that. Recently she has also said that she saw some kind of a skull picture (or emoji?) when she turned on her phone, and she interpreted this as a death threat sent to her secretly by this gang (I still don't know what that skull picture was about, or whether there was a skull picture at all to begin with. She might have simply misclicked on a stupid spammy ad on her phone, if you ask me).
But what happened today was really the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I told her that I bought a ticket to see a theatrical play, and she freaked out. She started to frantically ask me "who had directed me to go to the theatre" as if I was receiving some hidden commands from a "boss" or something. I told her that I didn't need anyone to "give me directions" to go and see a play. I saw the ad of a nice play in a local theatre, and purchased a ticket to see it, but she simply refuses to believe that I was acting out of my own free will, and it is really exasperating! She suspects that someone has persuaded me to buy a ticket (possibly someone who is an accomplice of her famous gang) so that they could follow me on my way to the theatre and harm me in some way. (For your information, the play is in the afternoon, so she thinks I am gonna be attacked in broad daylight, in the city centre.) She also told me that she had seen me in a dream several weeks ago, and in her dream, I was sitting next to a famous "deceased" actress. She took the "deceased" part as a symbol of death, I think, and since she is an actress, there is also a connection to theatre, so you get the idea. Her dream was a portent showing that something bad would happen to me in the theatre. (My mother has also been a very superstitous person for as long as I've known her, and she has a bunch of dream interpretation dictionaries in which she looks up the things she dreamed of every morning.) And it was today, after her nervous breakdown about this theatre issue, that I became convinced that I had been underestimating her condition up until now.
To tell you he truth, my mother did not have an easy life. When I consider her paranoia, I can see the factors that possibly affected her psychology in a negative way throughout her early years, culminating in her present condition. For example, she has had a very unhappy marriage that lasted for only about 3 years, and she and my biological father did not get an amicable divorce. (Their divorce proceedings took about 10 years to complete, which was a nerve-racking process for all of us. Don't even ask about the specifics of that.) My father threatened to abduct me and never to let her see me, so we were almost always "on the run," we moved to a different city and tried to keep a low profile, and even then, we were used to constantly looking over our shoulders, and we felt that we had to be hypervigilant about any danger relating to my father, etc. This situation continued for about 10 years (as I said above) until my parents' divorce was finalized and my mother secured my custody. But I can only imagine the damage that this long and stressful period wrought on my mom's psyche.
Secondly, my grandmother became diagnosed with dementia several years ago, and her situation isn't getting any better, as you would expect. My mother is her single carer, and it is very taxing for her, I know. She has no support. We are already a very small family (and we have somehow became estranged from all other family members over previous fights, disagreements, etc.), and my mom doesn't have any friends either. (I believe she lost the contacts that she might have had with any friends first when she got married, and then when she had to move to escape my b*****d of a father. Being unemployed, she did not have a reason to leave the house in the morning (except for shopping), and thus adopted a very reclusive life style, which only heightened her social isolation.) And now I cannot urge her to go out and socialize and make friends either, because (1) she cannot and will not entrust my grandma to anyone else and she constantly supervises her, she doesn't have time to go out and socialize, and (2) her over-suspicious attitude will probably make her unable to connect with others anyway. I am pretty sure she would begin to suspect that her new friends were only interested in keeping her company so that they could "set up traps" for her, so I'm afraid that socializing isn't an option for her at this moment.
I talked to my (maternal) uncle today about my mother's condition and we both agree that she needs to seek professional help about her paranoia. But the tough thing about paranoia is that one of the hallmarks of this condition is a severe loss of touch with reality, and this makes it impossible for the patient to have the self-awareness to recognize that there is something wrong with them. What we can easily classify as "abnormal, irrational thoughts" are simply "incontestable facts" for my mother. She doesn't think any of her beliefs is open to debate. So my uncle and I haven't been able to convince her to see a doctor at first, and she claimed that my uncle had also joined forces with the gang, and was trying to lure her to a doctor in order to have her drugged and killed. O_O
Then I tried to use a different strategy and told her that she should talk to a doctor about all these evildoers and their malicious plans, and if the doctor confirms that her fears are valid and she is right to be concerned, we would absolutely leave her alone and not coerce her into seeing a doctor any more. (In short, I tried to portray the doctor as a person who had the potential to prove her sanity, not her insanity.) This seemed to change her mind slightly, and she kinda agreed to see a doctor, though given how precarious the whole situation is and how "jumpy" her mind is, I'm afraid she can change her mind any time. In addition, I suspect that the psychiatrist will probably prescribe antipsychotic drugs for her (well, this is certainly one of the options, in addition to therapy), and if that happens, I doubt that she will take her medicine. She can even start to think that the doctor is one of the conspirators. At least I see no reason why she shouldn't think that way, given her history of seeing the most unlikely patterns in most unlikely places.
So I feel overwhelmed.
As I said above, my family is relatively small, disengaged, and disintegrated; and I don't really have anyone to talk to about this, except my uncle. And then he is not always very supportive, either. Since he doesn't live with my mom and my grandma, he wants to believe that all these things are "none of his problems," and wants to dismiss everything, actually.
I have some friends at school, but I don't feel like talking to them about this crisis we are going through either. First of all, mental health issues seem to be stigmatized in my community at large, and I feel that it will make me vulnerable if I confess that I am having a tough time because my grandma has dementia and my mom is suffering from paranoid personality disorder (or a related condition that causes paranoia, I don't know). Secondly, I am a senior student at a university, and I have found a very good internship position in a different city, so I will move there this summer, after I graduate (and my mother knows about this and has always - maybe strangely, given her condition - approved of this). My friends and professors who know about the internship have also been proud of me for getting the position, but I am afraid that their view of me can change if I tell them about my family members' mental issues. I am afraid of being accused of being a selfish person who goes to a different city while her family members go through a very challenging episode. But at the same time, I don't think I am a selfish person, I am just a young person who is trying to find a good job and - as a first-generation college student in her family - to build a secure and happy future for herself, after the traumatic events of her childhood which was anything but idyllic. People seem to forget that I am also an individual who has hopes, dreams, and goals; and I fear that even the people who have been encouraging me the most to pursue my goals (i.e., friends and professors) may turn against me if I talk to them about this issue.
I feel depressed over this whole thing, and I just wanted to share it with people who I suppose will not be viciously judgmental against me, and who will be able to empathize with me. I would really love to hear your stories, too, if you have had similar experiences. I think I would particularly appreciate any advice that I could get about coping with a loved one who suffers from paranoia and about how we can convince them to seek therapy and take medications.
Thank you, and peace,
HopeForBest
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