Understanding My Personal Schizophrenia

 

Understanding My Personal Schizophrenia

https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbad166

 

            Twenty years have passed since I started recovery from my schizophrenia. Those years have taught me many lessons about my diagnosis, and my purpose in life now is to use those learned lessons to help others who have recently been diagnosed. One of the important lessons I have learned over the years is that everyone’s mental health journey is different. We all may have the same symptoms, but those symptoms may vary widely depending on the person.

The right treatment plan has helped me to manage my symptoms, even though my medication does not take away my diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder bipolar type. My brain disease is incurable, but it is not an excuse for me to be irresponsible or to give up on life.

            One of my medications causes weight gain. One of the ways I combat that side effect is through intermittent fasting. I have talked to my doctors about fasting and together, we worked out a plan for the hours when I will eat and when I will fast. I have to be mindful and stop eating around 4pm or 4:30pm. I know that a little bit of time makes a difference in my situation. However, my fasting can be a trigger for my symptoms if I extend the fasting hours too much. It has been important for me to plan my day around when I will eat.  In my experience, if I begin to feel some paranoia like someone outside talking negatively about me to my neighbor, or someone listening in on a phone conversation I am having with my parents, I know that I may have fasted too long, and my hunger is triggering my schizophrenia symptoms.

            Another stressor for me is waiting for my medication to arrive every four weeks. Since I need to do blood labs for this medication. I usually do them on a Wednesday and then get my medication overnighted on Friday. When I do not get it on Friday that definitely causes stressors, and I began to get delusions about the delivery driver. It feels like bullies from my past have talked to the delivery driver and he has given my medication to them, and they will never give me my medication. I never actually see these bullies, but I hear their voices. Not getting my renewed prescription every month before I run out is a major trigger for my schizophrenia. I try to relieve these symptoms by distracting myself with exercise, watching movies, or listening to books on tape. I have also worked out a plan with my psychiatrist to get my medications a week before I am due to run out. That has relieved a huge stressor that I had been experiencing every month.

            The voices I hear are usually recognizable from my past. I conclude: Why would past bullies still have a problem with me? It has been twenty years since I last interacted with them. Have they not gone on with their lives? I can talk through these racing thoughts, but they still happen.  I try to distract myself from them. The next day I can usually explain what happened with my symptoms. I can understand my schizophrenia, but I still deal with the same delusions I had since my twenties.

            It had taken some time to be able to understand my symptoms. I can be on time for my appointments, take my meds and take away my triggers as much as possible, but I still experience the same darn symptoms!

When someone asks me what works for me, I answer: accepting my illness, being patient with myself, taking the right medication, and having things to help me distract myself from my personal schizophrenia. All this takes time. When I began taking my meds and they began working, I not only could accept my illness, but I realized what was going on in my brain was in fact schizophrenia. I still did not understand where all those excessive thoughts came from… that takes time. too. Mindfulness is a valuable tool to use to realize what is real and what is not… to just stop and figure things out. Sometimes I can, and sometimes I cannot, but I give myself time to figure out what is going on—what is real and what is not real.

I have spent many years learning to recognize my symptoms and figuring out what some of my triggers might be. It is hard work to constantly assess what could be triggering symptoms, but in the end, it is empowering to know I do have some control over my mental health journey. Asking myself questions about what I am experiencing helps me to live in reality. I have now been diagnosed with a severed mental illness for a longer period of time than before I was diagnosed. I try to be in a constant learning mode about my illness so I can evaluate what is going on in my life. My writing, speaking, and volunteer work is an outlet for me to add purpose to my life that helps others.