Ashu (name changed) could not do anything in life ever since he had been diagnosed of schizophrenia by the psychiatrist. He had been prescribed psychotic medicines by different psychiatrist doctors wherever his family had taken him to them .Yet nothing helped. His fears and phobias had worsened with time. The voices in his head continued disturbing him. His logical cognitive ability had been completely distorted and for him all the delusions had become the real images and characters.
Similarly Sheena (name changed) continued with the fear and phobia of persecution at the hands of a person who had long moved out of her life five years ago. Sheena had been diagnosed of delusional disorder (a psychotic disorder).Her life had become completely miserable as she would often get lost into her phobia and would not be able to conduct her normal day to day routine life.
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that disables and distorts the logical thinking and cognition of the individual affected by this chronic brain disorder involving “positive” and “negative” symptoms.
Positive symptoms relate to hallucinations (hearing voices or seeing visions that aren’t real), delusions (fixed false beliefs), and disorganized thinking or speech. People suffering from active positive symptoms often respond to those symptoms in ways that are obvious to others around them (e.g., agitation, disorganization).Ashu, mentioned above had suffered from imaginative voices in his head hearing that someone is out to prosecute him and that he would be sent to prison. While these thoughts were not visible to others but he often complained of hearing voices and attributed the voices to one of the persons he had been dealing with in his family business.
Negative symptoms relate to substantial decline in the affected person’s social interactions, communication, and motivation to conduct day to day affairs. Sheena had displayed negative systems when she had been referred to us for, a “split personality.” behavior, but Schizophrenia has nothing to do with split personality. She had been suffering from delusional disorder, a kind of schizophrenic psychotic disorder.
Ashu and Sheena both exhibited resistance to antipsychotic medications and their family members were definitely at a stage when nothing could help them. Ashu did sometimes show partial improvements only to go back to from where it had all started. We noticed that Sheena’s problem continued to be more chronic and affected all aspects of her life. She did not respond to any psychotic medications being administered by the psychiatrist.
But both Sheena and Ashu found it difficult to establish and maintain relationships within the family and externally. They were unable to carry on their day to day work on account of mood swings and delusions that would take a toll of their logical thinking. Both had virtually cut themselves off socially. Their disordered thought process prevented them to understand that they were not normal in their thinking faculty like other people in their lives. Their family too found it quite an uphill and expensive task to follow the treatment handed out to them by the doctor every fortnight on account of heavy cost and also due to the patient’s refusal to take the medication.
We decided to make good use of Mindful Perceptive Meditation Therapy and Cognitive Behavior Therapy together to treat both Ashu and Sheena regularly on every alternate day basis in order to maintain regularity and without giving them a chance to revert to their pre conditioned schizophrenic way of thinking and cognition. Initially we found it difficult to communicate with the subjects as they would either not come for counseling or if they had come, they would not pay attention to what was being discussed. Gradually they started to respond to our instructions. We had begun the treatment with “Shwas Preksha ‘(Mindful Perceptive breathing exercise on the psychic centers) conducted under the watchful eye of the expert instructor. Soon we started noticing a significant improvement in both of our clients.
Thereafter we had begun with them the activities of “Mindful Perceptive Meditation” which involves both body and mind into deep meditation on the psychic centers, being fully aware of the moment and the breathe present in every living moment in its total intensity”. This continued along with the regular exercises of Kayotsarga to provide the much needed peaceful perception of the body through mind. Kayotsarga is a process of meditation that dissociates the physical body from the mind and it puts the muscles of the body to complete rest progressively, somewhat similar to progressive muscle relaxation technique.
Soon a very significant improvement could be noticed in certain negative symptoms, (e.g., negativity about self and family, sense of doom, lack of interest in surroundings and /lack of drive) started yielding to positive thoughts on all these issues .The clients did respond well as we noticed Ashu and Sheena both had begun looking at the positive aspects of their life. Their sense of appreciation for some aspects of their lives could be felt in their daily interaction with us. We could see their interest reviving in their day to day life too exhibiting positive symptoms.
These results had further been strengthened by the process of Mahaprana Dhwani {greater inner sound effects produced by the help of mouth and nose while exhaling the breath by the patients }reformed on all psychic centers during the process of deep perceptive breathing exercises and exhalation undertaken by the patients.
Mindful Perceptive Meditation and CBT has been very effectively used by us in a variety of psychiatric/psychological disorders .We had used Mindful Perceptive Meditation and positive affirmative techniques to enable the affected person correct the functioning of endocrine glands producing negative steroids and emotions and subsequent faulty thought process .The practice of CBT generates critical cognition of actual position of the situation and helps analyze all kinds of thoughts with objectivity and factual back up. The Mindful Perceptive Meditation therapy supports written affirmative statements about the self and situations which would be given as homework exercises and are reviewed later with the clients. The whole process was focused on changing the negative perceptions about self and situations to positive emotions and thoughts.
Generally a patient requires 50 to 60 sessions over a period of three to four months. But in severe cases the sessions (each running for 45 minutes to one hour) can go up to 90 to 120 sessions over a period of 6 to 9 months’ time like it had been extended in these two cases for up to 6 months.
It gives us greater satisfaction and happiness that eventually after a hard work of six months , the patients had been cured of their problems to a large extent and with the help of their family and friends, the process of rehabilitation of both of them into the family and society had been achieved.
We have been making use of Mindful Perceptive Meditation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy successfully in many other cases of depression, anxiety, stress and many other psychotic disorders and many have been restored to their normal life.
Perceptive Meditation enables you live in and with your breath taking your mind away from your anxiety stress and worries of life .It empowers you to live in the moment with complete mindfulness of your soul ,body and mind “. Ramneek Kapoor.
If you have someone in the family suffering from any such disorder,Come and discuss with us how to proceed.
You take the first step today and we help you find the much needed happiness.
Call on us @9179383554 or write to us @ mansikpramarsh@gmail.com
-Ramneek Kapoor – Family Therapist, Psychologist Counselor and Science of Living Expert.
Alka Mansik Pramarsh Foundation Clinical Psychologists-Family therapists Indore 0731-4263087,9179383554 