schizoaffective

Holidays can be a tough time for anyone, but for those of us living with a mental illness it can be harder.
I live with schizoaffective disorder. A serious mental illness that combines symptoms of schizophrenia and a mood disorder, in my case bipolar.
Even though I'm well medicated I still can get symptoms especially when I'm stressed and the holidays can be stressful.

I have a hard time making eye contact due to feeling like people can read my thoughts, this makes people think I'm being rude if they don't understand. This can make socializing very tough and uncomfortable for me. One way I deal with this is to say in my head "if you can hear me blink twice" this reassures me that they can't read my thoughts because they never do what I ask them to.

Another symptom that makes holidays gatherings tough is I have auditory hallucinations. In crowded places it can be hard to tell the voices in my head from the chatter of the room. This is harder to deal with for me, but I find if I focus completely on one person talking I can quiet the other chatter both in my head and in the room. Another thing that helps is to step outside.

When I get anxious or overwhelmed just stepping away to the bathroom helps I usually splash my face with cold water to ground me and bring me back to reality.

Also, having a plan helps when getting ready for holiday get togethers. I plan how long I'm going to stay, bring my as needed meds in a pill case so they don't stand out if I need to take one, and know where I can "escape" to like knowing where the bathroom or back yard is.

What are some ways you cope with holidays?

#SchizoaffectiveDisorder #schizoaffective #schizophreniaawareness #Anxiety #Holidays

Have you ever had to change careers or quit for your mental health?
If so, Was it worth it?
#schizoaffective #bipolartype #mentalhealthmatters

I’ve never been able to communicate really. It’s always been small talk, casual responses, I’ve always obided by sit down and shut up, don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. I’m 22 years old and finally have made a major breakthrough in my anxiety and self confidence and want to have an actual conversation with someone about something that wants to conversate back. Anyone, let’s just be friends? #Anxiety #SocialAnxiety #Depression #BipolarDisorder #schizoaffective

So, like Lyndsay Wagner in the Bionic Woman I have a remarkably attuned sense of hearing that can pick up frequencies that others can’t, catching voices upon the wind even though they are some distance from me. This being so, oh how I am loathed! I wonder why anyone could have the inclination or the time to trip around someone else’s life, picking it apart so meticulously. It’s deeply disturbing to accept the notion, that I have no true sense of privacy because people who are completely alien to me and are hell bent on my downfall have ravaged through it and ripped it to shreds.

Or, my lucid imagination repeatedly sparks into creative overdrive bringing me a most unwelcome manifestation. Of course I’ve know such a thing for most of my life, although nothing as complicated as this - one voice after another with yet more and more still, all engaged in detailed conversation regarding me, all much to the negative I must add. Why my brain would play such torturous trickery upon me is a mystery.

They’re real! They can’t possibly be! No, they are, and the threat is real. Shhh, all you need fear is your own shadow.

I don’t know. I simply don’t know! #schizoaffective #Voices #Hallucinations #Reality

Was super depressed and suicidal, mainly from PTSD stuff. It was attempt suicide, go to hospital or try ketamine. I picked ketamine. It was amazing! I went in thinking it wouldn’t work! Unlike ECT (over 20 treatments) the Ketamine actually helped!! The Crying stopped. Agitation went away. I was excited to do things. I wasn’t sleeping All the time. I did a deep IV treatment. I’ll do another in 2 weeks when I get back from family trip.
I’ve been battling mental illness since I was 5 years old… I am now 41. Tried over 30 meds. Finally got On clozapine and that saved my life but it can’t make the trauma go away…I take only 4 psych meds daily (when I’m and out of hospitals I was on 7-9!). After 41 hospitalizations, so many years Of treatment and therapies, ketamine has been most helpful.

So today I went to my gastroenterologist and found out I need further evaluation to rule out conditions before settling on ibs and treating that with antispasmodics they said I definitely am a zebra with the complexity of issues autoimmune cardiac mental health and so forth And though I said it in jest it's actually covering up insecurities and paranoia that I'm a fraud and my illnesses are not valid despite true symptoms and extensive meducstins and hospitalizations and procedure ice come to doubt myself because of doctors initially saying fibro and myalgic encephalitis don't exist as a teenager when I just wanted to feel better regardless of it's was mind or body driven but with the schizoaffective this has be become a deep seated paranoia that my doctors are out to expose me as delusional for there own laughs reality testing tells me this isn't true but feelings hard to shake the tests are producing a lot of anxiety like are they giving me placebo is this all a test I know it's just my diseased mind conjuring up these thoughts but his do you other "mighty warriors" cope and quell the obsessive tape of uncertainty playing in your head #schizoaffective #POTS #ChronicFatigueSyndromeampME #granulomaanulare #Zebra just want be back on the Oregon coast so ill try to meditate on that to get to sleeo