Hallucinations In The House

I suppose one of the stranger things Social Hurricane deals with are the occasional hallucinations.  Monsters, usually, and voices.  She's always told us she'd rather NOT try to describe what they look like, and we respect her privacy to that point--it's probably not good to focus on them too much.

She's on a fair amount of medication already for one thing and another, and the psychiatrist would cheerfully prescribe her some stronger antipsychotic drugs to help control the hallucinations.  It's a trade-off, though, because generally the stronger the meds the worse the side effects, and she REALLY doesn't like the side effects.

So by choice, she puts up with the visions and voices rather than suffer the side effects, and we respect that, too.  She puts down lines of salt at her closet door, under her bed, and at her bedroom door, because the monsters "can't cross the salt."  It's a psychosomatic thing (and she knows this) but it works for her, which means it works for us as well.  It's a way of keeping her errant brain somewhat under her control, and more power to her.

But one time I twisted a hallucination's nose.  And I'm aware that most dads don't do this.

SH and I were having a conversation in the kitchen and she kept glancing over my shoulder.  I asked her if there was a monster and she told me yes, and she was trying to ignore him.  So I grabbed the thing by the nose, told it I was having a private conversation with my daughter in my kitchen and it wasn't welcome, and told it to get out.

And the Hurricane laughed and the hallucination, apparently much offended, retreated to her bedroom.

Now, we KNOW this is all in her head; the monsters aren't real, they're misfiring neurons or something like that.  But we face them, like we face most things, with humor and perspective.  Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.