Stuart is a prolific writer, a world-traveler, and a talented, up-and-coming documentary photographer. He is trying very hard to become the world’s first person with paranoid schizophrenia to reach the top of Mount Everest. To donate to Stuart’s campaign, please visit www.onemansmountain.com.

 

Title: Voices
Written on September 26, 2007

Two nights ago I lay in my bed trying to sleep. My mind was active, and as I lay thinking I started to hear muffled distant voices in my head. At first they spoke without any clarity but I knew they were there. I knew what it was. After a little while I found myself listening to two women arguing over a cake which one had baked. They began to shout at one another loudly in my head.

One voice accusing the other that she had baked the cake wrong and that they should taste the cake to see if it was suitable to eat. The other woman did not want the cake touched and was convinced that it would be fine.

Their presence was strong but I knew what I had to do.

Many years ago, I learnt not to fight with my voices, not to try to get them out of my thoughts but work with them. Accept their presence. So, the other night I just tried to relax and listen to their conversation.

When I first listened, their presence grew stronger and stronger. It did not scare me and I didn’t let it aggravate me.

Although I didn’t want it to happen, I found it fascinating. For a while I let them have their say and when I thought the time was right, I gently said to myself, "Enough now, go."

Then waited and when there was a “lull” in their words I repeated my words strongly but calmly, asking them to go. Which they did and I fell asleep.

This is a very rare occurrence for me now. I haven’t heard a conversation like that, which has been so strong with so much clarity, for a very long time.

In the past I used to feel very threatened by my voices and used to fight them and want them out of my thoughts. I learnt that the more I fought with them, the more I feared them, the stronger they became in their abusive words and daily presence in my life.

I found that a personal acceptance of my voices and treating them with a calm approach, which had to be practiced, weakened them and over the years they have disappeared or at least don’t have the strong presence they once had.

I don’t know why this happened to me the other night, I don’t know why the voices were triggered. If I do have experiences with voices now, they are very distant, in the back of my mind. I know they are there, still feel their presence, they are with me now as I write these words, these words are the trigger. But, they have no strength. There is nothing for them to prove, nothing for them to fight or harm.

I have found over the years, as my confidence and self belief have grown stronger, the abuse has stopped. I believe the voices I once experienced were created by my inner self, my own personal doubts in life, my lack of belief and low self esteem, how I thought others viewed me, which was in a very poor light.

What was unusual for me with the conversation the other night, though, was that these voices were abusing one another and not me directly.

I’m not sure I’ve experienced that before.

 

Title: Time
Written on December 4, 2007

For many years I did not wear a watch. I could not bear to look at a clock. I felt TIME had forgotten me. I played no part in the past, present or future. Recovery from schizophrenia has been a long journey. I can remember clearly, on one Autumn day in 2002, walking along the main high street in Dorchester Dorset UK. Just the fact I was walking by myself in the high street was proof of my new found confidence and growing strength of mind.

I had gone to Dorchester with the aim to buy myself a watch and to force TIME and the feeling of self worth back into my life. To make myself recognise my recovery was beginning and that my role as a fellow human being and importance as an equal individual was being re-established. By me!

I could only afford a watch which cost £10. But the symbolic statement it made as I wrapped the watch around my wrist was priceless. Suddenly, I was a part of TIME once more. Suddenly, I became part of the Human Race again.

I now own a kitchen clock and 2 watches. Maybe, as my life continues to improve, I may buy another (a third) and then a fourth.

 

Also in this issue: Donna Williams interviews Stuart Baker-Brown

If you liked these essays, you might also enjoy: Why Do You See Only One of Me?