Sorry but this makes no sense. A person doesn’t stigmatise themselves. What you are saying is you have the right to judge them if they don’t try the way you think they should. It’s pretty harsh. Not everybody has the same coping strategies.
Life is harsh. Sometimes you have to be harsh in return.
That’s fair enough. Reality is reality I guess.
A movie came out this year “me before you”. About a succesful guy who gets paralyzed and chronic pain after an accident. Anyway he falls in love with his appointed caretaker afterwards and seems to brighten up. But despite this he doesn’t change his plans and goes through with the euthanasia he wanted from the get-go.
Point is: with afflictions no matter how u build up ur life it may still be immensly painful. With sz and avolition and anhedonia trying to push urself to fit society’s definition of normal is like adding salt to the wound.
I think @shutterbug doesn’t care for people venting, and calls it “poor me” attitude. He also doesn’t understand that not everyones sz is comparable to his, and since he has achieved success, he projects that ability onto all szs. Or maybe he just turns a blind eye to disability to keep this site recovery-oriented.
How is life harsh to you please explain a little?
Heart condition that limits aerobic activity. Spinal injury with chronic pain (I’m still walking, but it hurts like hell). Diabetes. Sexually/physically abused as a kid. Some residual plumbing issues leftover from that as an adult (need a chunk of my bowel removed, but my heart condition scares off the surgeons who can do that). Recovering alkie and drug addict. Autism in addition to SZ. Etc.
Normal is boring. I aim to be functional with a splash of AWESOME here and there.
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I have no problem with someone feeling poor me becuase of schizophrenia it does not depress me and make me feel awful and overtake my recovery process.
As long as it is not breaking the forum rules poor me then, and if it is breaking the rules then point out the rule or rules it is breaking.
And non of it was your fault, right. But it would be your fault to not try to overcome all that, I am guessing is the way you feel to support others who it is not thier fualt.
I guess you wanted no sympathy becuase it would have made things even worse?
You can be highly empathetic and still very strong. Giving up empathy doesn’t make someone strong. I guess the question is where the line is drawn for having empathy but being encouraging vs. just being extra hard on people. I take my meds, go to therapy and go to school. Having said that, I am very fortunate that I haven’t experienced anyone being extra hard on me. The expectations I get from my therapist, pdoc and family are very reasonable. The only exception might be my Dad who is 75 and doesn’t get MI. Even he isn’t too awful. He did kinda push me to go to school (so I can get a decent job) but he would back off if my therapist said I wasn’t capable of going. SZ is a disorder that affects us all differently and so we can’t have across the board expectations for everyone. We aren’t the same.
Yeah it seems like the most empathetic poeple I have known were poeple who never had a trace of schizophrenia to me.
It seems like the poeple who can be the most non empathetic towards schizophrenia are poeple who actually have it.
Perhaps that’s a sign of the disease on mental processes. Who knows? I am highly empathetic. Then again, there is some question as to whether I have SZ or not. I may just have delusional disorder or some other form of psychosis.
You might not think that the comparison holds, but one time I heard that “once a person becomes so addicted to a substance that it is the sole focus of his or her entire life, that person can only go into remission from this addiction if he or she focuses his or her entire life on recovery”. I think it is similar with schizophrenia. Once the illness comes to dominate your entire life, you can only go into remission from the illness if your entire life is focused on recovery. I don’t think anyone is “cured” from this illness. You just get a reprieve from it. As for the blaming, I think it is misplaced. When people aren’t working a good recovery effort from schizophrenia I wouldn’t say they’re bad. I would say they are foolish.
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I don’t see a solid reason to settle to this illness, honestly.
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I am supporting you.
"No, you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime you find
You get what you need"
~ Rolling Stones
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With negative symptoms of schizophenia, and with depression, I longed for people to understand my condition and agree with me that I wasn’t capable, worthy or responsible to do whatever. I think it is a mistake to think people can only understand your position if they validate it, a mistake I was often guilty of myself in those times. There is such a thing as understanding another person while disagreeing about what needs to be done. I also think that in some conditions, people do not know themselves what is best for them - and if I think about it, mental illness is quite a good candidate for such a condition.
For me negative symptoms and depression mostly took the form of all kinds of ‘I can’t do this, can’t do that’. I was very sure of this, and people trying to move me to do it anyway seemed so far away from me, they surely did not understand me, and every hint that I in fact could do this or that felt like an offense. This gap, and the power with which I resisted the kindest suggestion towards me being able to do some stuff I felt incapable of - this resembles delusion a lot to me now. There is an almost total lack of appreciation of others’ opinions in such a state, or so it was for me: even though these people have known me for years, have raised me, have been there all the time - I did not take their opinions seriously at all when it came to estimating what I could and could not do. This is, in parallel to the similar idea in delusions, the point where I see for myself room for the notion of guilt. To consider the opinion of loved ones, to value their judgment and insights, to not dismiss them simply for disagreeing with me - that, as I see it for myself, is a moral duty.
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