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How She Helped Me – Small Things, Big Impact
To the coworker who helped me when I had a hallucination at work, thank you. When I told you I had a weird question and I didn’t know how to ask, you gave me your full attention. No discomfort, no judgement, you listened. You listened to me say that I had been sitting at my desk working and heard the sound of scratching from the inside of the server room door and I didn’t know if it was real or all in my head. Only a select few people in the office know that I have schizoaffective disorder, including you. But I had never approached anyone in the office with…
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How My Brain Works After Schizoaffective Disorder
At 17, I was a problem solver. I was an academic thinker who thrived on logic puzzles and complex literature. Creativity was a second language – drawing, acting, photography, and stream-of-consciousness free writes wrapped up in metaphors. Whether or not I was any good at them didn’t matter; the ideas and motivation just flowed naturally. Outside of undiagnosed depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), my brain was efficient and extremely sharp. Each of my mental illnesses has had its impact on my mental functioning, but with the onset of schizoaffective disorder, things took a sharp turn. Though my passions and other areas of interest remain the same, my brain works differently…