#schizoaffective

“I was diagnosed with schizophrenia last year and it has been tough. I don’t have much family, but my friends have been helpful with me managing. Medication and support has helped tremendously.”

Anonymous post. Thank you for sharing!

https://mentalillnesstaughtme.com/2018/12/09/perception-and-reality/

MANIC EPISODE

Fuck fuck fuck. I’m so fucking manic. I didn’t realize how manic until just now. Okay so here’s what’s happened. Me and the boyfriend broke up. I swung into a full blown manic episode without realizing it. I’m spiraling. I met a guy last night at a bar. He was super hot. We connected. Lot of similar tastes. It was great. Well I got his number. Saw that we’ve already texted eachother previously. We’ll we ended up meeting again tonight. We went to a bar. I packed my spenanite bag. Well at the bar I did Molly. It didn’t kick in that much so on the way back. I took more. Well we got to his apartment and his roommate was smoking weed. So I smoked some of my weed. He also had a blunt that I hit a few times. Well now I’m really high and have my little “reality check” moments. What am I doing?

I’m All Alone.

I’ve come to realize. I’m utterly alone. I have no one to fall back on when life gets hard. I only have myself to rely on. I’ve never had to do this before. And I’m envious of my family never having to experience this. Which is why it hurts me so much that they ignore me and exclude me. I’m doing everything by myself. I’m paying my own bills, working and making my own money. I have 20 days to find a place to live or I’m out on my ass. I’ve asked my family. We’ll, I asked my mom. It’s been over a week now. She’s ignored my call and texts. It just breaks my heart that she doesn’t care if I end up homeless. That hurts. None of her other kids would end up homeless. My mom takes them all in. But me? No. Nobody cares about me in that family. Besides my big sister but she has her own life going on. Hers is hectic too. I know she loves me though. She’s shown me time and again. But the rest of my family? No. None of them love me. No one will help me. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I did to not deserve their love. I used to stay alive just for them. Stop cutting, for them. I’ve now learned to live for myself. Because they don’t give a damn about me. It hurts. I cry about this alot.

MANIC, AGAIN.

I’ve just realized that I’m manic as fuck. The whole relationship with my ex was all part of my manic behavior. I didn’t even like him. I was pushing my feelings from my ex onto him. It wasn’t about him at all. In reality I didn’t like much about him at all. Then deciding to move in with him. Impulse move. I would never have made a decision like that if I was in a depressive episode. Like girl are you stupid?

I’ve come to realize that I was just rebounding to be honest. I’m still in love with my ex. He’s who I think about everyday. I listen to his music everyday just to hear his voice. It’s him that I want and this guy was just a distraction. I didn’t want him. The only thing about him that I found attractive was his tattoos and his dick to be honest. But my ex? Everything about him I love. He’s not my typical type. Not one tattoo, no facial or body hair. Emoish hair. He finally let me pierce his ears and nose so that made him a bit more my type. Now he’s wearing the earrings I bought him. I saw a pic on Instagram and he looked so fucking cute. Damn.. I really need to not date until I’m over him. Or else it’s bound to fail. I just wish he was ready for a relationship. I’d be with him in a heartbeat. Oh well. Right now I need to focus on me. Finding a place to live, working and making money. Building my savings back up. Paying my taxes. No time for boys. I don’t have time. I need to crack down or I could end up homeless or just fucked. It’s okay. I can do this. I. Am. Resilient. I always make it through the hard times when I swore I wouldn’t. I can do this.

I Dated A Manipulator

He’s literally so fucking annoying to me now. I can’t stand him. After talking to my best friend last night. He helped me remember the exact reason I stopped talking to my boyfriend in the first place. So back in June. We were fucking. I told him that’s all it was. We weren’t dating. Well in turn, he decided he was gonna be a fucking prick the rest of the night and treat me like shit in front of his friends. We went to karaoke and I just sat by myself. Everyone was having fun while I was having a panic attack. He told me I can just leave. When he was the one who took me there. So my friend came and picked me up. Once I got in his car I started crying so hard. Well fast forward to a little more than a month ago. Before we got together. We started talking again. I have no memory of that night besides remembering that he was being a dick and I was secluding myself during karaoke. I didn’t remember why it all started. Well my best friend remembered because that night I was texting my best friend the entire time. Well my now ex, decided to use the fact that I don’t remember to his advantage and gaslighted the living fuck out of me. He convinced me that it was ME that was being a major bitch that day, which triggered his mental issues and made him be a dick to me. So yeah. It was my own fault for why he was being a dick. So I thought aw shit, I’ll give him another chance because I was being a bitch back then. If I remembered what really happened that night I would have never given him a second chance. Ever. So yeah. Manipulative much? So now, every time he does something wrong he manages to swing it around qnd makes himself the victim and I’m the villain. Even though he’s the one who fucked up. Like when he had me pack all my stuff, just to kick me out of his apartment. He said it was because “I’m hard to confront”. He blames me.

I need a long hug and a gentle punch in the face with a chair or something.

If you’re sitting at your desk with that blank look in your face and you can feel yourself falling apart. Get up, go on a walk, put some music on, dance it out, put together a puzzle, get a coloring book, go hang with someone in your house, etc. Do something for yourself, school work can wait

Text: disability from psychosis isn’t laziness

Your impairment from your psychotic disorder is valid. Disability from psychosis is real and must be respected. Demand accommodation. Demand to be treated like a human being.

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Text: schizophrenia is not a character defect

You’re not a bad person for having schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is the result of faulty neurology, not faulty moral character. We are not lazy, violent, or in any way lesser because of our disorder. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Text: psychotic people are worth the effort to treat

Psychotic disorders are harder to recover from than many other mental disorders, and part of that is due to a lack of treatment options. But part of the reasons there is a lack of treatment options is because psychotic disorders are viewed as harder to treat. It’s a never ending cycle. They’ll give us medications, which help many people certainly, but many psychotic people need therapy to see real improvement, I know I did. But there is no standard therapy for psychotic disorders, and many therapists are at a loss for as what to do with us. We need a standard schizophrenia/psychosis therapy like CBT/DBT/ACT, but in the meantime we need more therapists to be willing to try expanding their knowledge bases and therapy schools to include a greater breadth of illnesses in their curriculums.

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Text: respect psychotic people’s treatment decisions

Our treatment decisions are between us and our doctors/therapists. We might choose to seek input from you, but ultimately, an adult psychotic person’s treatment decisions are between them and their treatment team. Respect the choices made by a psychotic person in regard to medication and medication type, and therapy. It’s not an outsider’s place to comment, especially unprompted.

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Text: respect psychotic people’s mental and psychical limitations

Our limitations are not for you to test. While what a psychotic person may be able to do on the day-to-day might vary, their capabilities are for them to decide, not you, the outside observer. I’m my experience, I can go from okay to not okay very quickly when people push me, and I need people to respect me when I say “no”. People don’t like to do that, because they view it as “unfair”—well tough. Respecting and accommodating disabled people isn’t special treatment, it’s basic decency. My schizophrenia causes severe impairment at time and I need special consideration, and I’m going to demand it.

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Text: visible psychosis isn’t “ugly” or “weird”

Sometimes we have visible psychosis symptoms, like involuntary facial movements or talking to ourselves. These symptoms are looked down upon by the rest of society, but there is nothing wrong with these symptoms. Unobtrusive but obvious psychosis is not inherently harmful, and is not something to be ashamed of. You are not something to be ashamed of.

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Text: you don’t have to apologize for your symptoms

I sometimes find myself apologizing for my psychotic symptoms, and I’m trying to stop. There is nothing to apologize for. Psychosis is a medical disability, and as such we are entitled to accommodation. We have a right to have our needs met, as human beings and as citizens. Don’t apologize for being psychotic, we are not a proble

When I was in inpatient, no one had any idea how to handle a person with psychosis and trauma. I was just treated like I was being purposefully “difficult”, and nothing was done to help me cope with conditions I was in.

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I don’t consider giving me klonopin for a panic attack when it was prescribed to me for conversion disorder a proper treatment for a PTSD episode. Giving me medication when I wasn’t supposed to be taking in order to shut me up it isn’t proper care.

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Or the other hospital, sending me to my room and telling me to do breathing exercises when I was clearly on the edge of a breakdown from isolation, that wasn’t helpful either. Ignoring a patient’s needs isn’t treatment, and quite frankly I wish I could get my insurance’s money back, because I didn’t get much in the way of medical care.

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Creating stressful situations by messing up medications and not giving me prescribed pain medication on time, serving me food I had told them repeatedly I was allergic too, screaming at me, emotional abuse by staff, and other mistreatments are not conducive for anyone’s recovery. let alone a person with a complex trauma history. Hospitals can and should do better, but they have to want to.

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Text: psychotic people are not “broken”

We are whole as we are

Text: Maine isn’t “cute”—it’s a serious illness

Mania isn’t an aesthetic. “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” isn’t a thing. Mania is a serious medical condition that can require hospitalization, and in the form of mixed episodes it can lead to people taking their own lives. Mania is a common cause of severe psychotic episodes, Bipolar 1/ schizoaffective are no joke and must be taken seriously. Don’t diminish the severity of mania, please. ⠀

Text: psychotic people have the right to complain about abusive doctors

Sorry for the late uploads today, I am not feeling well and have been asleep most of the day!⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

If you’ve been mistreated by a doctor or medical staff, you have the right to complain. You don’t have to stay silent just because they might be more educated than you are, or are older than you. You have a right to respectful medical care, and if you haven’t been given it you have a right to say so. Leave the negative review if you want, really. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

If the mistreatment goes beyond disrespect to abuse, you are not doing anything wrong by alerting the medical boards. You have a right to be protected from malicious doctors, even with a psychotic disorder. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Text: psychotic people’s pain matters

Our suffering matters. We should not have to be left in pain. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Text: psychosis doesn’t make you a bad person

A medical condition does not make you a bad person. Medical conditions are amoral states of being. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Text: psychotic people deserve to feel good about themselves

A lot of us struggle with self esteem issues, I believe some as a side effect from our illnesses but also from the stigma and mistreatment we face. We deserve to feel good about ourselves as much as anyone else, there is no reason we should not. We are not burdens and we are not lesser, psychotic people have equal worth to non-psychotics and we will always matter.

Respect! Schizophrenic! People! ✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊

Text: don’t blame psychosis for acts of evil

Psychosis doesn’t make a person evil. There’s a reason it’s difficult to plead not guilt by reason of insanity. Evil does exist, and people should stop trying to pretend it doesn’t by blaming the nebulous specter of “mental health” whenever there’s a horrific crime committed.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

The only major crime committed by a psychotic person that I can think of in recent memory is the Colorado theater shooting. One crime, one mass shooting out of how many hundreds? That’s not statistically significant, that’s a blip on the radar.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

We are not made evil by our psychosis. Psychosis is not a character flaw. Psychotic people are not the stuff of horror movies.

Text: psychotic people deserve hope

Why don’t psychotic people have higher recovery rates? I want to know. Our recovery rates haven’t changed much since the late 1800s, and that really bothers me. Are treatments truly that ineffective? Why hasn’t more work gone into finding effective treatments for schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders (I think I know why)? Why is there no standardized therapy for psychosis yet? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

These are all major issues. The lack of research into schizophrenia and psychosis is disturbing. We need research into more effective drugs, drugs that won’t sedate us out of life and cause neurological damage. We need therapy designed for us. We need hope. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Text: psychosis is not a punishment

Psychosis is not divine or karmic punishment. We did not sin and earn our suffering. Stop the victim blaming.

Text: five psychotic people agency in health care

Does anyone else feel like we are treated like children?

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I feel like for the first few years after my psychotic break, I was not given much agency in my treatment. The only people who respected me and my decisions were the first two therapists I had before leaving for medical leave. The doctors, nurse practitioners, and group therapists all handled me with kid gloves. I feel like I was not listened too, spoken over, and my experiences diminished. I couldn’t really talk about what was going on, and I couldn’t really grow. I felt silenced, especially with my third therapist. I also feel like this is not uncommon.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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My current therapist is the most brilliant mental health professional I have met, yet she grants me full agency. We have a relationship based on mutual respect. I can truly open up to her, because I am treated like a legal adult with things of value to say. I can ask her about professional things, since I am going into counseling. She even will talk to me about issues concerning racism, as she is African American and I am a White person who never had somebody to ask before. She has told me i can ask her about anything that is bothering me. I really feel like I can grow into the person I want to be with me current therapist, because she treats me like valuable human being worthy of equal respect. I didn’t get that from the old doctors and my third therapist.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

We can grow, and we can get better. But we need to be treated with respect and agency. We are adults, and we are people, and we deserve to be treated like it.

Text: psychotic people have the right to accommodations

Don’t be afraid to use your disability accommodations.

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Disabled people of all kinds can have trouble feeling as though they deserve their accommodations in work or school, a form of internalized ableism. Disabled people in the not-so-recent past fought long and hard for us to have the right to this help. Many people still treat us as though using accommodations is a form of cheating, failing, or taking the easy road. But that is far from the case, accommodations only slightly level the play field for disabled people with their abled counterparts—we’re still at a disadvantage, even with accommodations most of the time.

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It might seem harder to “justify” using accommodations at school or work now that we’re working from home, but as final approach for students, I encourage you not to think like this. We are all under a tremendous amount of stress, which is a major trigger for psychosis and many physical illnesses. Use your accommodations as much as you need, it is not cheating to use what you are legally and morally entitled to.