I never received any diagnosis (though “attenuated psychosis syndrome” may have worked at some point) and now I’m stable but I still don’t feel well. I’m not really aware of how ill I might be, or if I’m at all well, it doesn’t seem like it because my functioning is still sort of poor. I don’t think others can perceive much about me though, it’s just that I know my cognitive and emotional states are not what they used to be, and to me this is frustrating and I can’t help but see it as illness.
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Other people tell me whether I’m well or ill. I just go through each day in ignorance I guess.
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I don’t think I’m super aware of overall wellness. I keep tabs on how I’m coming across to others and try to maintain some balance in my mind, but it would take an external evaluation to really make things clear to me. Through this forum I’ve discovered things that are typical of sz that I thought were just my personality.
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I have a problem in that the more ill I get, the less insight I have into how ill I am.
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I was very aware of my state of illness when I was ill and I’m very aware of my wellness now. I consider myself very blessed.
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Ummm it depends. With depression I’m very well aware of how bad I’m doing. With psychosis I’m aware when I first start getting symptoms again that something is up…but when I go into a full episode I sort of lose that awareness? And then I don’t really see myself as being in an episode until it’s over and then I’m like ???what just happened???
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I notice how ill I was when I start getting better. Unfortunately the process is slow and takes years sometimes. My life is an endless cycle of getting sick and recovering with very little of anything in between. I’ve finally decided to stay in meds. It sucks but you can at least build a simple life on them rather than riding the roller coaster without them.
I’m lucky to be alive, u see myself as handicapped but not dead where I should really be. Psychosis saved me from prison or a drug overdose because I was heading down a bad path and eventually cracked up.
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Am I ill? oh, didn’t notice.
Well, according to my ability to function in the world and appear normal, I am very well indeed. I have virtually no negative symptoms and come across as typical, even articulate and intelligent.
If you factor in my severe delusion and talking to my ‘audience’ every time I am alone, I am severely mentally ill
I am aware that I have severe delusions while at the very same time believing I am not mentally ill at all. A paradox many mentally ill people experience. A foot in both worlds as it were. My meds make me feel better and appear to help prevent losses of control so I take them.
edit: TBH One of the reasons I take my meds is because the people talking to and controlling my brain tell me I have to take them
I feel well because I function ok in life and am stable on my meds. When I relapse then I am aware of that too. I am aware I have a delusion but at the same time I deny it is a delusion. Weird yes. When I admitted myself into hospital I knew I needed help that’s why I went.
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crazy, not stupid.
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I know I’m ill in a way, because I’m emotionally impotent (not just sexually thanks to the medication). I can’t experience the range of feelings I did before getting ill, and without being able to really feel things life becomes flat and dull and not much matters, and that is awful! I don’t see a way around this but damn, maybe a reduced dosage? My doctor is so busy and sees so many patients that when I get in there once a month or so, I’m not agitated or anything, stable enough, so that seems good enough. It sucks. I’m not good enough, so I have to call this illness.
That’s harsh. To say “psychosis saved me” sounds odd to me because as far as I can tell it has ruined me. But we’re all different of course.
Not really. To really know I’d have to know where,in my case, the boundaries between the behavioural,social and psychological/psychiatric aspects lie. Also to what degree they overlap.
So called DSM/ICD symptoms are fairly mild but that is juxtaposed by the severity of the social symptoms.
“Are you aware of how ill or well you are?”
not really. I feel more safer when other people, like doctors, can confirm things like that
Yes I am well aware of my illness, of everything that I used to have and now is gone. Even during my psychotic episode I had retained some insight. At some point I remember myself saying “Oh my god, they stole my emotions and feelings” - this can be translated by the fact that the negative symptoms had kicked in; and even more important I was able to eventually tell my dad “I need to see a doctor” despite all my paranoia and delusions.
happy cake day, dude
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Thanks double oh seven !
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Yea. I’m well right now and other than fifteen years of baggage and emotional turmoil, isolation and lack of success I’m pretty damn normal. However if I don’t take latuda and Prozac I could seriously be talking to myself in a corner somewhere or thinking that the Russian Mafia is hacking my laptop.
I also can’t smoke pot anymore which was a daily ritual of mine since I was a kid. Life is so wierd that the only way o could cope was by being stoned.
I think we give neuro typicals a lot of credit. The healthier I get the more it seems that everybody is hanging on by a thread to their own sanity.
Some people never experience psychosis and they’re just shitty people too.
I am well as long as I am stable and going off the meds could easily make me very sick. I still remember being acutely psychotic and knowing that I was 100% incompetent at the time. I also know that if my meds were to stop working I’d also be in the same shape. I am competent enough to live on my own with some assistance for transportation and monetary assistance for basic needs if I remain stable but if things unravel I am best suited in a psych facility. it is a conditional sickness.