Recovery is a Process

Recovery isn’t something you accomplish. It is something you work on. It’s trying to live the best life possible. It doesn’t mean living the best of lives but living the best life you can given your circumstances.

The best way to follow the path of recovery is to concentrate on proved reality based techniques. Abandoning things that negatively affect you is important as well.

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Hi Malvok, could you share with us your reality based techniques?

Medication is most important. Therapy is valuable. Casting aside unproven “cures”. Keeping positive people around you. Using others to reality test your thoughts. Socialization. Keeping busy. Focusing on the positive. The list goes on and on. It’s all pretty much common sense.

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“Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.”
― René Descartes

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In order to keep an eye on a situation that was very upsetting to me, I was hanging out at my kid sisters old pool after work and I was meeting people from all over the globe.

One lady from Thailand was telling me about “common sense” in Thailand of where you swim and don’t swim because of Common Sense.

If I was in the south, I might think I could swim where I could find a lake or river or anything (just like here at home)
Common Sense of the area might say… “Why are you swimming with Gattors dummy?”

I’m beginning to see Common Sense as regional.

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Everyone seems to think common sense is so simple or that it comes naturally. Well for some common sense isn’t so common.

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I like this definition by Urban Dictionary - Common sense is what -I- think others should know.

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to me, recovery is not about getting back to where I was- it is about turning my year and a half of psychosis into a catalyst to make me better than I was before. I am stronger than ever (physically), as sociable as I was before my onset and making all A’s like I did before psychosis. I plan on following my rather brutal mantra; “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”. I take every day on medications, in remission as an opportunity to be better and be stronger than I ever have been.

I used to think that every day would be the same, I would anxiously function at a level below my ability and then get drunk to dull the pain, quiet the voices and escape my twisted version of reality. Now every day is a dream come true, just waking up and not hearing voices nor feeling people watching me is more than I ever expected out of life. I used to think that I would always be a schizophrenic. Now I am a person who has schizophrenia.

It makes me sad to see some of us continue to struggle, but I think that you people who have been fighting schizophrenia for longer than I did are stronger than I am.

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When I am on a low dose of medication or on the wrong med for me, I lose my common sense. The right med comes into play then what follows is the “recovery” process. But it cant be just any medication, it has to be one that works for me

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Well, since I was asked for my techniques, then it does apply.

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Many seem to object to my use of the term common sense. What part of my post is not common sense?

The bit i have difficulty with is 'socialisation ', not as a marker for ‘recovery’(i think having a good social network is important to well being) but in terms of achieving a healthy level of it.
For many interacting/socialising comes easy and naturally but some of us it’s like trying to learn a difficult language without a tutor. Sure we can learn to parrot a few phrases through observation and copying, and applying hopefully appropriately in certain situations , but in the end it’s not a natural skill for us.
I think a lot has to do with having or not having good social skills, or maybe alternatively poor social interaction leads to deficient social skills.
Whatever, good social skills are fundamental to interacting effectively in society which could be seen as a major factor in moving towards recovery.
Unfortunately i have not heard of much training in social skills in the UK. and have no idea of how things are in the US/Canada for example.
Certainly i have never been offered anything in 40 years of psychiatric care although i am regarded as having very poor social skills…

My comment wasn’t directed at you. I didn’t reply to your post just to the thread in general discussing it. It seems you may have taken my post as a personal slight and if that is the case all I can say is I’m sorry if you did take it that way as it was not my intentions.

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