Forgive me if something along these lines has been asked previously.
I am diagnosed Schizoaffective - depressive type. I am mid-20’s and symptoms came on gradually starting when I was 22. I entered what I can now actually accept and recognize as acute psychosis twice, and after four hospitalizations and ECT treatment I am now relatively stable and greatly improving. However, I recently came out of what I see now had been a state of pretty much complete denial that this is what had happened. This is the first time I’m even publicly mentioning my condition.
This is about 2 years of severe episodes of catatonic depression and psychosis. In that time, I lost my job, my apartment, my partner. I still didn’t truly believe I was sick until my last hospitalization. I was living as if the diagnosis was not real.
How long did take you guys to recognize a past experience of acute psychosis for what it was? Is denial for that length of time a regular experience?
I lived in denial for 4 years believing i had some spiritual awakening. I have been feeling down ever since. I did become much more aware of myself and surroundings, like i stepped out of a bubble. Things that were normal are now not and i am still in the process of changing/ dealing with everything with the help of a therapist.
Hope this makes sense
I was in denial for six years. I was hearing the voices of my neighbors doing a psychic attack and I believed that was happening. I started having more delusions and telling my mom about them. She told me to see a psychiatrist. I couldn’t make myself see a psychiatrist. One night the voices were really getting to me. So, I asked my husband to take me to a hospital to see a psychiatrist. This was after business hours. Well, they started me on medication that night and I was able to stop hearing voices pretty quickly. I hated being in the hospital, but I got treated right away. They diagnosed me and sent me home with medication and a prescription for more.
I got sick just before age 17. I was hospitalized about six months and experienced some very scary things. When I got out of the hospital I got a job and even though I didn’t refute my delusions I let it go. At age 22 I relapsed and since then I’ve known psychosis. I heard someone say once an insane person never knows he’s insane and I thought I’d beat it by remembering that. I am psychotic, right now. I can be skeptical and still be crazy. Mostly, I’m just burned out and work me too hard I go off the edge, my mind stops working. I’m doing well. I’ve been adapting to being alone for so many years, so slowly. But my isolation is not by choice. I tell myself it’s not forever and I feel better. I’m 52 years old and I haven’t much time. I heard something in the news, an anniversary of a political event and it was 2 years ago but it seemed to me just a year ago. It won’t be long I am on my deathbed. When I was 30 that seemed impossibly far away. Maybe I’ll get to write a book or a song before I go. I’m going to spend my time wisely, after all I was born in the land of opportunity!
I think this is what would happen to me almost exactly, I would come out of a period of time where I was uncontrollably psychotic, and then just try to ignore it or think of it as something that was some sort of fluke or “normal”, or quite literally black it all out. Then I would proceed to deny medication, then descend back into hell.
Im 27, ive only accepted it fully now. After five years. Even still. I have moments where i think its not real and have to remind myself the meds are evidence that it is real
I hope you can find a place of ease and comfort as you pursue good things with the time you have. Life is short! In the long run at least. I’ve felt like the last 2 years went by in a month!
I get urges to stop my meds because I don’t like the side effects and I start to believe I don’t need them because I’m not ill, but yeah I have been on them long enough that I have no idea how I’d be faring without them. Most likely very poorly.
Its the same here, i think up justifications thru side effects not to be on the meds but its very obvious to me after 3 or four hospitalisations that i need the meds
I was about 4 years took my voices really feeling like they were gonna kill me for me to be like i dont believe im schizophrenic but if medicine keeps me alive. Then on medicine i needed to be told that id still hear voices they would just be manageable then i looked at all the delusions that had been created and realized none of them made since. I had to realize if my mind could create dreams it could create psychosis. Its so hard because it really feels like you’ve been hooked up to some machine that is there to run experiments on your psyche.
Its to good to be true. I know synchronization exist. But i suppose people want to live into the synchronization. What i mean by synchronization is by politically incorrect. When they tell you the world was diffrent they actually mean synchronization but for some odd reason i cant comprehend
I knew what it was the whole time but hoped it would go away like every other malady I’d had up to that point. I further delayed disclosing because I was afraid of what they’d do to me. But the psychosis, insomnia, and my life just kept getting worse so eventually I gave in. My life sucks now but I think I got some good years in because I did so.
I originally was diagnosed Sza too. I accepted the the fact that I’m mentally ill after I got in trouble with the police back in 2008. Domestic Violence but I was found Not Guilty and wasn’t convicted.
This makes a lot of sense to me. I too had what I thought was a two year long “spiritual awakening”. It descended and spiraled until nothing I thought or said actually meant anything, and I was extremely distrustful of anyone, especially someone trying to counter what I was saying or believed. It was really bad. It’s still shocking to me where my brain went.
Same. I still struggle now to understand anything that happens.
I knew something was off for the two years when symptoms started, but I never believed I had developed this illness, I just thought of myself as a “horrible person” who was being cosmically punished by demons and so I deserved this, or if I was more lucid, I just thought it was going to go away.
I never internally accepted the full reality of everything until very recently.
