The study link below sites a relationship between childhood trauma and insight into one's own schizophrenia. In my case, I never experienced childhood trauma. I was not neglected or emotionally/physically abused. I did, however, witness violence in my household. I escaped being beaten, but I witnessed and overheard my two siblings getting "disciplined."

I feared the punishments, so I grew up to be passive and sneaky, in respect to my parents. I walk around with a sense of guilt and helplessness for not being able to stop the physical alterations. I developed an "every man for himself" philosophy, as a result. Sympathy for others can be a struggle for me occasionally.

I have lacked insight into my mental illness, at my lowest and most psychotic point. But now that I am medication-compliant and actively reaching out for help/counsel, things have gotten better for me. I also continually research my mental illness, which helps me tremendously, to have insight into my schizoaffective disorder.

To read about the study, click on the link below.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31028001?dopt=Abstract

***When I said that I occasionally lack sympathy, I was not referring to the Synagogue shooting that happened at the Chabad here in San Diego (Poway) yesterday. I am very sad, scared, and reflective. Although I am Catholic,  I have many Jewish friends & I have love for the Jewish community.

We need to stop the violence. We need to pray more! I wish that for every unbalanced person; please pray and get in touch with your spirituality; don't act in haste/violence. Life can be challenging & unfair, so you need to meditate/reflect/pray daily for your mental health, happiness, and for love/acceptance of your neighbors! 

I visited the Cordiano Winery today in Escondido with my beautiful friends pictured here. Spending time with good friends was just what the doctor ordered. So I guess one really can have as good a time, as pictured on Facebook. I know that I did today!

Check out that view!

Ha! I figured that much! And to think I read through all those b.s. Facebook posts about your awesome/perfect vacations! You know that you and your wife fought like hell, aside from being bored and exhausted, the entire time! Take another damn trip!


https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-travel-lies-about-vacation-where-you-stayed-how-much-fun-20190418-story.html

From the Art Show at my children's grammar school. Anyone want to purchase some art work? Let  me know. It is beach inspired art work. :)

Stole these jokes from my friend.

Embarrassing! I get psyched out like this almost every day. LOL He is waving to someone else. Surprise! I am in a relationship too...and don't really care if you are waving at me or not!

I want to see the movie La Llorona! It has overtones of my experience as a single mother. When I briefly separated from my husband, the stress of single parenting really got to me. Single parenthood and mental illness are a challenging combination. I am a superstitious person by nature and I believe that occult evil is out there. I guess I just need to stay busy, faithful, faith-filled, and out of trouble. Believing that occult evil is real and possible triggers the voices in my head. I can't help but be curious though. I still want to see this movie. LOL

I also want to see how much they ripped off The Exorcist to make this movie. Is the priest the hero in La Llorona too? 

Is it me, or are they playing great music at CVS pharmacy? Awesome 80's song of the day! You gotta love The Pointer Sisters, right?

In the 1990's, I worked at a radio station and I hated half of the music that my station played. Matchbox 20 was one of the bands that I did not appreciate. We have the MTV Classic channel in our home now and I was just taken back to the 1990's today with this video. At first glance, I cannot get over the fashion styles of the 90's, which I hated even then. Why did so many musicians, like Rob Thomas from Matchbox 20, have Jennifer Aniston's haircut from the television show Friends? Everyone (men and women) sported the Rachel hairdo. What were we thinking? I never paid any attention to the lyrics of this song until now. We turned the closed captioning subtitles on our television, so I finally understand the lyrics of so many songs. 

This video, "Unwell," is a testament (once again) to how musicians love to sing about mental illness. Rob Thomas is not mentally ill, but he explores it in this video and song.  During the 90's, I was in college, and on the brink of mental illness. It is pretty interesting for me, to be taken back to that time, through this video. I never paid attentio back then, but so many years after it's release, I finally appreciate the sadness and thought that went into making this. Perhaps, the band knew someone or was touched by mental illness, in some way, too. 

Paul Simon - 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Audio)

One day I will visit Santa Cruz. Gosh! I really haven't been anywhere ( besides home/San Diego) in years. I see a road trip to Huntington Beach in my near future. Whoop! 

Don Henley is one of my celebrity crushes. Love those drummers! He is not a young man anymore, but he was a fox!

Thinking about you!  No worries! I am not dangerous or anything! :)

I met with my psychiatrist the other day and admitted that I am a bit embarrassed about certain things that went down during my psychotic episode of 2014. I regret calling 911 so many times on my Venezuelan-American neighbors, who were doing nothing wrong. My Pdoc tried to make me feel better by saying there is a difference from the thoughts that people experience during psychosis and the thoughts of a true racist person. I have schizoaffective disorder. What is their excuse? 

One of my best friends from high school posted this today, to which I simply said, "Wow!" As a Caucasian American, I know very little about what I feared while psychotic. (Santeria) I have heard about Dia de los Muertos and I saw the Pixar movie "Coco," but I am still mystified by things, such as, the statement below.

 I may have thought my ancestors were speaking to me before, but not while I am cooking. (I could use their help cooking though.) LOL

In honor of International haiku day,

I try to cook well
Why don't my ancestors help
I could use a hand

You get a hug! You get a hug! I need a hug from this guy today!

OMG I remember Hands Across America! On Sunday, May 25, 1986, in Brentwood, CA, my friend Valerie and I, sang and held hands with complete strangers, in order to raise awareness and money about poverty/homelessness. What hippie thought of Hands Across America? Probably my truest hippie moment happened there at 11 years old. This was definately that moment!  Unfortunately my activism has decreased to nothing since then.  

Recently, this event has taken heat for failing to get every last person to take part in it or to raise enough money to solve the problem of homlessness. I know whoever organized this event had a good heart and good intentions. We need more moments of unity, like Hands Across America!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_Across_America

I will not be watching the Game of Thrones finale. I never did watch it. I turned it on for one second tonight and watched a woman narrowly escape a gang rape. Game of Thrones is nothing but rape and incest nastiness.

But I am the real Khaleesi, Mother of All Dragons! (and don't you forget it) 

Happy Spring! Looking forward to Easter!!

Slow day musically on the Ellen show. This song, titled "Sweet but Psycho" is offensive. People who do not have mental illness should not toss around the term "psycho."  Well, I am psychotic, not psychopathic, so I cannot relate to where she is coming from. Ava Max uses mental illness tropes to get her point across. It is very cliche! "Oh run, don't walk away" from the mentally ill? This artist feeds into mental illness stigma. Ignorant! 

Jump to conclusions? Who, me? There may be something to that, in my case. I decided pretty quickly that individuals were hexing me, causing the voices in my head. I did attempt to research how that could be possible. Sadly, I did not get very far in proving that possibility. No one believes me to this day! Please read the article below to learn more about delusion development in psychotic individuals.

Delusions are one of the most common symptoms of psychosis, but little is known about what causes them. A new study from researchers at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute offers insight into the development of delusions, which could lead to better treatments for people with psychosis.

The findings were published in Brain.

An estimated 80-90 percent of individuals with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders experience delusions -- false, but strongly held, beliefs that can be distressing and debilitating. Researchers have long suspected that delusions are caused by alterations in the ability to make inferences, which relies on observable evidence to shape beliefs. However, previous experiments have suggested that other cognitive processes may be involved.

"The experiments typically used to understand the link between inference and delusions have focused on cognitive and decision-making skills, but they haven't conclusively shown a link between inference-making and delusion severity," says Guillermo Horga, MD, PhD, the Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and lead author of the paper. "We developed a novel experiment to determine whether delusions stem from abnormalities in inference."

In the experiment, Horga and his team asked 26 adults with schizophrenia, including 12 who were being treated with antipsychotic medications, and 25 healthy individuals to draw beads from one of two hidden jars. Participants were given money, which could be used to bet on the identity of the hidden jar. They were told that drawing additional beads would help them bet correctly, though it would diminish their winnings. Throughout the experiment, they were asked to rate the odds of their bet on the identity of the jar.

"We found that patients who experienced more severe delusions tended to seek more information in the task before making a guess than their less-delusional counterparts. This is a truly novel finding, and it helps confirm the fact that rigidity is an important part of delusional beliefs," says Horga.

Using computational modeling, the researchers developed a quantitative framework casting delusions as "sticky" beliefs that evolve in an unusually slow way. This may explain why delusional patients seek more information than non-delusional individuals. It could also help to identify new treatment approaches, such as neurostimulation of the prefrontal brain areas involved in updating beliefs, or cognitive training to shape inference-making.

"Previous work suggested that psychotic patients 'jump to conclusions,' but in our study we saw that individuals with more delusional beliefs took more beads from the jar before they made up their minds," Horga continues. "While participants with schizophrenia jumped to conclusions more than healthy individuals, delusions specifically were associated with slower change in individuals' beliefs."

Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, commented that "delusions are among the most common and intractable symptoms of psychotic disorders. This innovative research casts delusions in a new context which allows for novel cognitive therapeutic approaches aimed at preventing and disrupting delusional thoughts."

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Seth C Baker, Anna B Konova, Nathaniel D Daw, Guillermo Horga. A distinct inferential mechanism for delusions in schizophrenia. Brain, 2019; DOI: 10.1093/brain/awz051

I responded to a poll on Facebook about the worst movie I ever saw. I would have to say any of the sex romp comedies of the 1980's take the prize for that. I always thought to myself, "How did the movie Zapped ever get made? If that movie can get made, maybe I can make a movie one day." 

Zapped was morally reprehensible. It objectified women. I believe it had a terrible influence on myself and the boys I grew up with in the 1980's.  The funny thing is that the star of Zapped, Scott Baio, now portrays himself as this conservative Mr. Wonderful. Well Mr. Wonderful has a past and it isn't pretty. Blech! Zapped is hands down, the worst movie ever made!

In this b.s. movie, a teenage chemistry student has an accident in the lab, that leaves him with magical powers. He uses his powers to get females naked, get revenge on his enemies etc. (Totally silly/gross b.s.)

My movie, The Voices, would be a giant step up from Zapped, if it ever got made! Zapped is my benchmark for what I can create. I know that I make a better movie than Zapped! LOL

In 1986, when I was 11 years old, my family and I traveled to beautiful Canada. We met a blended family with 6 teenage BOYS! Nice! The Buie boys were cuties. In talking to them, my sisters and I  asked what they thought of neighboring America. They admitted that they had no intention of helping us with any of our wars. They even blamed us for acid rain! Ouch! I admit, we did use too much aerosol hairspray in the 1980's. Click on the article below to read about climate change in Canada. I fear for the accelerated rate of global warming for our Canadian neighbors. What does this mean for us in America? What does this mean for the world? How do we slow down/stop global warming? This is scary!


https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/04/02/canada-warming-faster-than-the-rest-of-the-world-says-environment-canada.html?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMedia&utm_campaign=400pm&utm_campaign_id=Politics_Canada&utm_content=canadawarmingfasterthanrestoftheworld