To be honest, I don’t struggle too badly most of the time — my case is relatively mild.
Still, it’s incredibly difficult for me to fully accept that I have a form of schizophrenia that requires ongoing treatment.
Do I accept that I might be ill for life? That’s something I wrestle with.
Do you accept that you have schizophrenia?
Lately, I’ve been worrying a lot. I’m afraid my life expectancy might be shorter than that of someone without schizophrenia.
I also carry this constant feeling of having a “secret” — like I need to hide the fact that I’m on medication.
And of course… the delusions. The paranoia. Sometimes even about the people I love.
Another thing that weighs on me is the thought that my IQ might have dropped.
I feel like it’s harder now to achieve good results or to be efficient at work, school, or university.
I will never come to fully accept it. I was med-free for two years and developed a superhero mentality where I did TaeKwonDo and gym sessions. Meds took everything away, became lazy and did not pursue my fitness goals. Life is good still, but I’m envious of the Fitness influencers on Instagram. Like… It should be me with his 6-pack abs!
Without medication, I feel so lively and cheerful – unfortunately, I become very delusional… I get extremely suspicious – and my impulsiveness rises so much that it feels like I could move mountains.
That’s how it is! @ekoms
I accept that i have sza. I’ve tried going without medication and it was disastrous. I’m very fortunate that i have a pdoc who listens to me and a family that has always been supportive. It took me 25 years to get to the point where i can live independently, no more group homes and a few hospitalizations a year. I can live with that.
That’s very beautiful—what happened to you… and one of the best things I’ve read today.
I want things to get better for me with age too—to understand myself even more deeply, to fully internalize that medication is not the devil’s invention, and to achieve even more as the years go by.
A good prognosis is the best thing that can happen with schizophrenia. @WhiteRaven
Yeah being with this illness and accepting it as a part of my life is also really really difficult. I haven’t attempted to go off the antipsychotics yet but my doctor said I could try after a year or 2 to come off them.
I dont have any delusions or hallucinations except for some intrusive imagery but apparently thats normal. So i think that I might have a chance at trying out not being on the meds? But after reading so many stories of people failing to sustain their life without the meds, it demoralises me. Still I shall try.
Nope. The way I look at it is that schizophrenia has me and it had better learn to get the hell out of my way cuz I got a big list of shxx to get done today. Yoooooooooooooooo!
I am finally coming to terms with the fact that this diagnosis is real and won’t be going away any time soon.
Going back on an ap has finally helped me see the difference in my brain on and off of an ap. I am just too delusional off of an ap and I have to be on medication to spot the difference.
once I accepted it I became suicidal because of the loss of career and love life. eventually I found hope from love and a new ap med and the rest snowballed into a huge fount of hope for me…I wish the same for me…stay on your meds.
Statistics show that’s true but they don’t tell the whole story. There are reasons we have a shorter life span but you can mitigate those reasons. First of all, when they calculate the statistics about age they count people who have committed suicide at a very young age. So for the sake of argument, if eighty out of a hundred people live to be an average of 80 years old but twenty out of a hundred committed suicide when they’re in their twenties that’s going to bring the average life expectancy down statistically. So that’s one reason our life expectancy is lower.
Another reason is a lot of us smoke, more than the general population and we get lung and heart disease from that. Another reason our expectancy is low is that many of us are obese and sedentary and don’t exercise so I assume you know the effect this has on our health. It causes heart disease, diabetes and strokes among other things. So early death from disease is counted in the life expectancy statistic.
But a lot of those things are life style choices. If we take care of ourselves and eat right and keep active and exercise we can mitigate those other factors and realistically live into our seventies and eighties.
whether or not i want to accept it, people notice i have it-even if they think it’s something else, they always see it and there always comes an odds i will be just treated differently than others because of that. it’s unavoidable! so, i have to.
I have accepted for last 15 years I have Schizophrenia, my teens and 20’ s were not the best. Diagnosed and section when I was 31 years old. Learned to live with it, take every day with positive and friendly outlook. Hoping to restart my eBay UK business soon and upload some cover songs on YouTube. Stay positive on here everyone, all though no cure, it does get better.
It doesn’t make a difference in my life if I accept it or not. I just take my medication and live my life I got this diagnosis for over 30 years. I don’t make a secret out of it. I strongly feel I was misdiagnosed schizophrenia back than, but I been in many psychiatric wards and there is definitely something mentally wrong with. I don’t know if it’s schizophrenia or not. When the doctor wants me to hear voices I better do, when the doctor wants me to be delusional, I better am. I am very creative. Don’t mess with a psychiatrist. The gods in white.
