Hey all, you’ve slowly been getting to know me over the weeks, but I’m thinking do you guys still get symptoms while on meds?
I seem to have none but I get anxiety when I go out cause about 5% of the time what I can’t shake is, I look a little odd and feel a little odd due to having the illness, have you guy ya felt this?
So question is do you feel slightly odd? It has been put in my mind with another person experiencing sz
Yeah, when I’m out in public a lot I don’t quite feel as anxious as I used to. But it’s still in the back of my mind of how I have sz and a lot of other people don’t.
Meds do work differently for everyone. For some people it only eases their positives, and for others it pretty much takes care of them but they’re still left with negatives.
@Montezuma hmm… I have a lot going on my mind but I think I’m at a stage where I’ve recovered to the best of my ability, just memory issues
I understand. That could be due to cognition or something else. Just keep working with your Dr.
Yeah, it would be good, but everything else is working ok, think I have to put up with this is the vibe I got from my psych.
Changing psych shortly so he or she might have a different outcome to it
You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In Between
Sounds like the jungle book @Bowens
I have pretty much zero positives on proper dose of meds. Maybe a little bit of paranoia.
i think i seem at least slightly odd. maybe not just by walking but by any interaction. maybe by me not standing still in public too. but i dont feel odd. i dont really think about it or worry about it anymore. i dont care if people think i seem odd. actually the odder i got over the years the more people have left me alone which is nice. i can walk past people selling stuff and they will completely ignore me and hit up the person behind me. it is nice.
i catch myself whispering to myself in public. i stop when i catch it but it happens without me noticing it. 15 years ago i would have been so embarrased. i dont care anymore.
I’m hoping a cure or karxt will be better… yeah you’re right I’ve been on the path for 8 years it’s always different, but I’ve managed ok… just a lot of complaining to psychs and parents… lol such is life, it is what it is! I’m hoping for happy days but I’m just glad things are ok these days
Haha!
I think you’ve been saving this one for me in regards to all my silly jokes about liking wholesome showtunes.
(j/k)
Yeah that’s heaps nice, like before I used to get left alone pretty much all the time… then I would get noticed for sometime, now it’s like I’m being invisible again, which is nice! Medications affect you not only with negs and positives but the way you appear too, which was what got me. Now I’m off that which is a heaven sent thing. Wouldn’t mind a gf now! But slow progress
People never try and sell me ■■■■ either. It’s awesome.
Fly your freak flag high.
See like from a post before about being a dreamer or realist… this is my realist moment… I like dreaming lol no one can control what you think!!!
I’m definitely odd, I was odd before schizophrenia and I’m odd after schizophrenia. I think the oddness though is to be attributed to having different lifestyles for the most part which makes it only indirectly related to schizophrenia. Not to say schizophrenia and antipsychotics don’t play a role in the oddness, surely the negatives however tiny create some odd quirks popping up even if just sporadically, but I think that if I were to follow a normal lifestyle I would likely end up losing a lot of what makes me odd. My point being that exposure to normality has a normalizing power and normal people generally are exposed to normality 24/7, while I and I think many of us, tend to be exposed to less normality comparatively, many of us don’t work and our tastes, philosophies and outlooks on life are often odd themselves which would require a greater exposure to normality than usual to get to know how to integrate and express them in a way that’s perceived as “normal”.
Yeah well put! 1515
What do people they say they have instead of sz, or do you avoid the topic altogether?
Edit: what’s worked for you?
I’ve given different answers to different people at different times. Depression, social anxiety, deep introversion etc. I hate having to lie.
I have social discomfort, bordering on anxiety sometimes. I feel good with old friends though.
But has it worked, I tried them too, but believe people Will believe what ever they think no matter what. I wanna sound smarter like by saying neurological disorder or auto immune disorder but don’t know which is more legit!
If I can I just say it point blank without a hint of shame, doubt, or what have you, not even as though I am making light of things but without implying a burden. They end up thinking I have a sense of humor and that things aren’t that bad. Yesterday I went literally: “Periodically I have hallucinations and delusions, a couple weeks ago I was hearing birds speaking while chirping” as though I was telling them that I have to take a sh*t every now and then and I took a big one a couple weeks prior.
Sometimes I make it a curiosity and try to explain the delusion side of things passing by the altered realization that accompanies them, explaining as though it were like the difference between watching the same movie with and without soundtrack, with all the emotional music twisting your outlook on things. People get that hey, it’s not that alien I would also react weirdly if I had suspense music embedded in reality or something along those lines.
It’s about making it appear understandable or making it appear as something that isn’t going to affect them. I don’t need to hide anything. If you feel the need to hide things when you say the truth or a lie, you aren’t taking control of the narrative. People perceive your vulnerability and end up rationalizing it by projecting things onto it as best they can. If you give them channels through which to relate or don’t put them in the condition of feeling compelled to show empathy or sympathy, they’ll be happy to not drag things down.
It is different when I expect people to perceive me as vulnerable or want to be acknowledged for my difficulties, especially with people with prior interactions with psychotic people, then I either downplay or misdirect visibly, so that the person feels like I’m trying to cope and this plays out as though I’m asking them not to be burdened further with worry and sympathy in a way that allows them to comply with my request.
It is the worst when I have to deal with people who expect me to be vulnerable in general without any understanding of my condition and of how it affects me personally, then they end up projecting sympathy before I get the chance to set the bar and keep looking for something for their sympathy to latch onto and if they don’t find it they grow displeased and doubtful, because at that point my subconscious takes over and starts making up all sorts of emotions to bend my behaviour to their expectations, leading to anxiety and fear which then makes me anger prone in order to overwhelm their disgusting approach and reassert my own truth, because I am tired of being cornered into all sorts of BS just because they think that sympathy is a jolly and something that is acceptable to lead with. It isn’t.
People who lead with sympathy or use sympathy proactively are misguided, sympathy should always be reactive from an emotional and not a simple cognitive prompt, because proactive use of sympathy has only a proper response, which is anger or at the very least irritation, and the setting almost always doesn’t allow for it or lets it lead to misunderstandings because people who do this don’t have the awareness that maybe our anger is justified and their sympathy disgusting. The fact that you perceive sympathy and don’t react with anger leads to a spike in anxiety which then justifies the sympathy. It is a sickening process which validates their misguided behaviour, but there really aren’t any ways to deal with it other than soldiering through the anxiety and anger with as much composure as we can muster.