Schizotypy and Old schoolmates

(A serious piece)

“Facebook is for sad people” my son informs me . I have just joined Facebook, which has confirmed all his suspicions. I reply that it’s a socially acceptable form of stalking which doesn’t require me to find my shoes.

On joining I was asked to give my school details, and in an uncharacteristic moment of candour, I told the truth. This resulted in me finding several old classmates, triggering a series of flashbacks so vivid and so painful that I had to go and have a lie down in a darkened room.

I wonder what my classmates remember about me? I was painfully shy, with such low self-esteem that I was desperate to avoid attracting any attention. Being a schizotype, I was on a loser there. We tend to attract attention whether we want it or not. I struggled to remember where I was supposed to be and when, what I was meant to do and what clothes I was suppposed to be wearing to do it in. My teachers thought I was doing it to annoy them. I was extremely good (as schizotypes are) at grasping ideas and linking facts together, so I got top marks a lot. My classmates probably thought I was doing that to annoy them.

I hadn’t been diagnosed yet, back in the Eighties the psychologists hadn’t even invented schizotypy. Some are still arguing about whether the condition can present in school-age children. Well, I have some news for them. YES IT DAMN WELL CAN! I was showing all the typical characteristics of a benign schizotype by the time I was eleven. Dreams seemed real, reality seemed dream-like and some days I thought I was dead. Schizotypy isn’t a mental illness, but it predisposes you to anxiety, paranoia and depression, which you can do without in your teenage years. I didn’t have a social life and hadn’t learned social skills; if your parents are anxious, paranoid and depressed you tend not to.

My teachers, like my parents, were more concerned with the state of my socks than my mental health. As long as I did my homework (and frankly it was easier to spend my evenings studying than to sit with with my parents) then the teachers left me alone. I missed a lot of school in the Sixth Form due to depression and stress-related illnessed. I tried to leave but wasn’t allowed to because it would have upset the timetable or something.

If I were in that environment nowadays I would study languages and write witty, satirical pieces about what it is like being misunderstood. In those days I didn’t have the words to express the muddle in my mind and didn’t have the courage to keep trying to explain it to people who weren’t listening. I avoided all subjects which require you to speak, stuck my head in my books and kept it there until I was finally through the system and allowed to get away.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not writing this to feel sorry for myself. Life is good and it keeps getting better. I’ve travelled places and met people and done stuff. I've had treatment and I am no longer stalked by the demons of Anxiety and Despair. These days, when I talk about my experiences of mental illness, people assume I am joking and politely wait for the punch line.

What concerns me now is that my children have a better time of school than I did. My son is a schizotype, lower on anxiety but with a double order of hallucinations. He was acting noticeably oddly by the time he was nine. I went to the school and Had a Quiet Word with his teachers. Although puzzled, they were sensible enough to realise I wasn’t going to go away and so agreed to give him the support he needed. Mostly this involves helping him not to get overstimulated, as the hallucinations start when his brain overloads on data. Even a loud carpet can make him hear things.

He started at upper school last September. I went to the school and Had Another Word. I put it to his teachers that they had two choices: they can support him and watch him soar through school, picking up awards and inspiring others; alternatively they can crush his spirit with unthinking conformity and institutionalised bullying, which is likely to push him into a series of depressive episodes and ultimately screw up his academic career. It’s gratifying how readily his teachers come round to my point of view when it is expressed in those terms. Obviously, he is expected to work hard and do his best to be a credit to his school. Sometimes, however, teachers need reminding that being an individual is not in itself against the School Rules.

Imagination is a powerful and life-enhancing gift, and forgetfulness, poor timekeeping, a tendency to see and hear things that are not entirely real, and an ability to misunderstand simple instructions are not things that we should need to feel ashamed of or apologise for. The most important lesson I ever learned from my time at school is that you don't have to pull your socks up, shut up and copy everyone else just because that makes life easier for the grown-ups. I just wish I hadn’t left until now to learn it. It is knowledge that would have done me more good than everything I learned all the Double Maths lessons that I ever tried to turn myself invisible in.

[The characteristics of schizotypy are explained here if you can stand the long words: http://schizotypy.totallyexplained.com/].