1 month ago
I am a lucky person when it comes to having schizophrenia. Antipsychotics work so well for me that over the course of more than two decades, I have never had a psychotic break while on an antipsychotic. In fact, I haven’t experienced any symptoms of schizophrenia either while on medication over the past 25 years. …
2 months ago
I took Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) briefly in my early twenties, after my first brush with psychosis. DBT is a type of psychotherapy that helps people learn to manage their emotions and improve their relationships. During this time, my mental illness was developing, and I was in intense emotional pain. I had experienced so much …
3 months ago
Collateral damage often results from psychotic breaks. You can lose a job or a career from having a psychotic break observed at work or an email you sent out. You can sustain enough cognitive impairment from having a psychotic break that the job or career you had prior to the break is unsuitable for you …
4 months ago
Embarrassment and shame can be huge factors after one psychotic break or multiple ones. You can do bizarre things, say embarrassing things, or communicate ridiculous-sounding delusions in front of people whose opinions matter to you, even though you do not have control or power over the situation. Based on the delusions and hallucinations you are …
5 months ago
When I came home from the psychiatric ward on multiple occasions of psychosis, I just wanted to crawl in a hole and die. The only way I kept going, eventually getting out of bed sometime each day, was through mustering a sense of self-pity. I was driven by this idea of how my life was …
7 months ago
My life was in a holding pattern because of serious mental illness for about 14 years, from the time I was a sophomore in college until I was 34. My experience of life in my twenties and early thirties was a perpetual cycle of heartbreak and feeling misunderstood. I watched my family members and friends …
10 months ago
Psychotic breaks, even though they are deemed mental versus physical, are not under our control and discretion. As a control freak for quite some time in my life, I have always been an overly responsible, serious person who is hard on myself. By believing I am in control of everything around me, I can make …
11 months ago
In my experience, there is a prevailing misunderstanding among people in the public, as well as some in the medical profession, that you cannot be symptom-free if you have schizophrenia. In fact, if you are diagnosed with schizophrenia and have no symptoms once on medication, it means to even some well-seasoned therapists that you must …
12 months ago
A “lack of insight” in psychology means the inability to understand you have a mental illness or that you have symptoms of mental illness. The gift of insight is a powerful one, but also an ability I had taken for granted before losing it. My psychotic breaks took hold instantly, and when they did, my …
1 year ago
After psychotic breaks, emotional healing is needed, and part of this recovery involves navigating relationships impacted by your psychotic breaks. Sometimes people cannot tell what is real and what is not during your psychosis, especially when it is totally real to you. This conflict of reality can bring confusion and fear in your friends and …
1 year ago
After my initial psychotic episode at age 21, I was put on antipsychotics as a preventive measure. They prevented another psychotic episode while I was on them, but after my acute health crisis, I still just wasn’t completely myself. Because of the health crisis, I had to withdraw from college, recover, and then return after …
1 year ago
It is easy to be unduly hard on yourself for having psychosis. Choosing to love yourself anyway may not be easy, but it can serve as a road map out of darkness and into a bright future. I was so incredibly hard on myself after each time I was hospitalized for psychosis. I woke up …
