- Anxiety, Depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Perfectionism, PTSD, Recovery, Schizoaffective Disorder, Schizophrenia
The Weight of Mental Illness – The Invisible Burden on a Lifelong Struggle
Trigger Warning: Mention of Self-Harm From a young age, I began finding things along my path. I’m not sure which came first – depression, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, but they clung to me. And over the years, they swelled and shrunk at varying rates, but I could not shake them altogether. Each in turn flourished, multiplying symptoms. It became too much to carry in my hands, out where people could see. I felt the need to keep them out of sight, and tucked them into a backpack. Through the highs and lows of my childhood, this weight remained settled heavily on my shoulders. In junior high I found myself so…
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Negative Symptoms – A Look Inside
What are negative symptoms? Well, they can be difficult to explain. Two days ago, I sat in the passenger seat of the car, sorting through my thoughts. I was irritated, but consciously forced urges to say mean things out of my head. There was nothing worth fighting over. At a certain point, the mean thoughts slowed and stopped appearing. Instead, they were replaced by ordinary things to say like comments on the songs playing and random thoughts. As they unfolded in my mind, I looked them over. But with each one, I ultimately decided they weren’t worth sharing, though there was no anger behind it. So we drove in silence.…
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How I Self-Medicated Without Drugs and Alcohol
I was once asked if I self-medicated after the onset of my mental illness. The answer? Yes, but not with drugs or alcohol. It wasn’t my clarity or control over my mind that bothered me the most when schizoaffective disorder hit me like a bus. I wasn’t ready to deal with those yet. What I mourned the most was the loss of the ease of academics, the ability to eat anything but stay skinny, and some level of innate athletic ability – the things that others could see. I felt robbed. It felt like I was worth less without those things. And since then, they’ve held roles as both ways…
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The Impact of my Illnesses on my Significant Other
Meet James. He’s a hardware and software engineer from the same area of California that I’m from. We met back in high school and didn’t really like each other. But 8 years after I moved to Illinois, we reconnected through Facebook. Now he lives with me in Illinois and we’ve been dating for 3 1/2 years. His support is vital to me, and he regularly supports me through symptoms and setbacks related to my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and schizoaffective disorder. Typically on this blog, you hear my perspective. To give you a fuller idea of the impact my illnesses have on those around me, here is…
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Living with the Pieces of My Shattered Mind
The shadows felt alive. Dark and sharply defined, I could feel them breathe as we walked our dog in the dark evening. The shadows were nonthreatening, but the longer this internal war goes on, the more my world seems to come alive. It began with voices in the distance – a scream, whispers, conversation far off in the distance, always too far to be heard clearly. We turned them up and down in therapy, inspecting from all angles. But the only thing that came of our initial investigation was that I felt that their conversation had something to do with me. At some point in my past, my mind fractured…
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Why we can’t forget about people with schizophrenia
It’s exciting to see so many organizations and individuals coming out to support and shed light upon mental illness. Brave people are standing up and sharing their stories, something that can be very frightening to do. The fight against stigma is gaining support daily. But in our efforts to dispel the myths and stereotypes around mental illness, there are still diseases that are often overlooked or treated differently. When it comes to advocacy, we can’t forget diseases like schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. The fear of the word Even within the mental health community, there is a great deal of stigma around disorders involving symptoms of psychosis like schizophrenia. The words…
- A Day in the Life, Hallucinations, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder, Schizophrenia
A Day in My Life with Schizoaffective disorder – Moving Day
It’s moving day – well, day 2. We spent the night in our new apartment. It’s still skeletal when it comes to furnishings. Bags and boxes litter the rooms, stacked on the furniture and the floor. Despite all of that, I already feel at home. I lean towards the mirror as I put on my makeup. It might seem strange to some that I would wear makeup when I’ll be spending my day lifting and carting around boxes, but, for me, makeup is a form of self-care. I don’t think I look awful without it, but I feel more secure when I’ve spent time taking care of myself. It’s not…
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What My Disorganized Thoughts Feel Like
I wake up every morning not knowing if my thoughts will stay in place today. When talking with others, my thoughts can become derailed and wander off to other related subjects. I can be perfectly aware of where the conversation is, but my mind takes me by the hand and leads me on paths that gently begin to deviate from the topic. In high school, my friends became accustomed to me piping up when the conversation headed my way, announcing, “a really weird train of thought led me to…” after making my remarks, we would retrace the steps from the original topic to my latest comment. It’s not that I’m…
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Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective Disorder – How they’re alike, how they’re different, and what it felt like to get each diagnosis
During my mental health journey, I originally received a schizophrenia diagnosis It sounds strange, but I was a little excited when I received the schizophrenia diagnosis. Not because I wanted to have schizophrenia, but because now I had a reason for why these things were happening to me. I had documented treatment methods. And it was something I could research and learn more about. That was something that was very important for me. Possessing knowledge about it made me feel like I had more control at a time when my world was spinning out of control. The diagnosis also crushed me. At that point, all I really knew was the…
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When All You Can Do Is Try
Receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder is life changing. It can turn your entire world upside down. I would love to tell you that I’ve always handled my diagnosis and living with schizoaffective disorder with dignity and grace, but that’s just not the case. Despite my ability to articulate what I’ve been through, I don’t have myself entirely together all the time. I would like to believe that I do, but I don’t. I’ve been bitter, I’ve been angry, and I’ve been in denial. It’s feelings not unlike that which some people with diagnoses of other chronic illnesses or terminal illnesses go through. I used to try to…