Alogia or anhedonia improve?
The second one I guess. I spent about 2 years just laying in bed not wanting to do anything and kinda miserable
I was severely messed up with several symptoms when I first got sick that I donât have anymore ten years later. I had terrible physical tics that made me resemble someone who had touretteâs. One of them was clapping and rubbing my hands together. Also I had memory loss in the middle of sentences which seems to be similar to what you are describing, which is much better and less frequent now. I got treatment and spent time with family and my symptoms slowly got better until most of them disappeared completely.
I donât know how long youâve been sick but if itâs less than 5 years you still have a pretty good chance of improving naturally.
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Do you have access to a treadmill? I know with negative symptoms itâs hard, but if you forced yourself to walk on a incline for an hour you would get a rush of endorphins and maybe dopamine too.
Flyingswan is correct, meds are not a cure, itâs only treatment, but holistic methods may improve our lives vastly. For me, weight training gets me through the week, takes up time, and makes me feel good about myself.
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Yes I have had thoughts sort of get sucked into a dissociative amnesia and get lost. That did improve as I trained my ability to stay on track, doing things like counting with my hands to 1023 without losing track over and over again or listening to audiobooks helped over time tip the balance.
I can talk with someone and keep a conversation going without going mute, I canât do it without my mind going blank though. Personally I think you just need to work on handling your anxiety here. You donât need to be conscious of what you are going to say, let go of that and youâll be speaking circles around your friends in no time. Talking isnât meant to be a conscious process for the most part, you have a wrong idea about the role of your consciousness in talking which is giving you anxiety and constantly forcing you to scramble to find something to say.
Children will most definitely not understand. You are overthinking so damn much. Iâve been depressed itâs tough but you shouldnât believe your feelings to this extent. Depression is meant to make you more objective, not make you run circles around very basic theory of mind to validate your agency. You are experiencing this sadness not due to your life, things are hard emotionally because you are holding on to stuff that doesnât belong with you anymore.
Just like somebody who gets paralyzed needs to let go of his dream of climbing mount Everest you have some grieving to do and youâve postponed it for way too long. You are feeling sad and that your life doesnât have meaning because you havenât yet grieved for that which you lost. Itâs time to just allow yourself to grieve the future you thought you were going to have, which isnât simply suffering, a whole lot of acceptance and letting go needs to take place. We often donât let ourselves grieve stuff we never had and thatâs unhealthy, especially when going through something like Schizophrenia. Life isnât over but your old narrative needs to go. Most of us learned to appreciate the small things like a colorful sunset or a good glass of water when youâre parched after weâve grieved for the future that didnât come to pass. It took me years to accept that my life was my life and to stop comparing it to this and that.
Things can get better but you need to let go of your idea of what better means. You have kids, most of us would give a couple of fingers to have something so meaningful in our lives. Can you really find nothing of value in being a parent? I get that itâs hard, stressful and it takes away from your ability to self-care but I think that if youâd just find a way out of your depression and your framing of your life, your kids could be reason enough to want to live and not just to stay alive and if you off yourself theyâll always have a hard time seeing the value their love has for those who receive it because you didnât consider it reason enough to want to live.
Donât do anything drastic, breathe, grieve your losses instead of lamenting them and then youâll naturally find all sorts of reasons to keep on living, theyâll start popping up left and right if you actually manage to go through the whole process of grief, thatâs a promise.
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Has your flat affect improved too?
I got diagnosed 15 years ago but since june this year i was put on concerta for negatives but it made my negatives worse once i come off it so ive only been severe since then. Hoping my brain chemistry goes back somehow but its looking like i fried some neurons in june
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I do a lot of running but i dont get a runners high. Probably lifts my mood a bit though. Has any of your negatives improved
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What helped your memory
It blows me away how you have schizophrenia but you can talk in so much detail and accurately like why do i have the same illness but i cant think in that much detail. Its like my head is empty and no enthusiasm. I then think have i got it more severe then most
How do you keep a conversation going if your mind is blank though. If nothing is there then theres nothing to say. It defo gets worse when im anxious though so your right there.
My kids are everything to live for but when im with them its so dull and boring. I desperately want to give them more but i have no personality. They arent going to want to see a dad who just exists it will be hard for them.
How can things get better for me? I just want some relief with my alogia and some emotions back
Thank you 1515151
I mostly had problems with lack of interest in things⌠my diagnosis is SA disorder ⌠I felt empty and abused most of the time but my affect changed often.
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You dont know that for some people negative and cognitive are getting better with time
Have yours 1515q5q5
My head is empty, itâs just been empty for much longer than Iâve had to deal with Schizophrenia, same for my enthusiasm, I never had any that wasnât borrowed from others. I wonât deny that I think my symptoms are on the milder side of Schizophrenia, I wouldnât include my cognitive symptoms in the mild assessment though, I feel the cognitive symptoms starkly but I was more than brilliant before, that left me some leeway. When I write I donât think, I just check my emotions while my subconscious does the writing and I just read. I am far from this articulate when talking. All I do is make sure my emotions flow and that I agree with what Iâm reading, which often results in me starting to write in circles repeating the same things and trying to nail an emotional arc I canât get my subconscious to put in writing.
My thoughts are sluggish and my focus is easily lost, when I speak my consciousness is more an editor than anything else. I just predict whatâs a possible reaction/sentence etc. and my body is already playing the role, speaking, writing so on and so forth. You donât need to come up with anything. People leave cues for when they want you to do all sorts of things, when no cue is there you just look at your surroundings and figure what would fit there. You rely on your goal seeking and your planning for social interactions while I rely on my pattern prediction to know what to say or do, sort of like chatGPT.
What you can do for things to get better is work on reducing how conscientious you are. The more conscientious you are the more prone to anxiety you are in social situations and the harder it becomes to just flow with your surroundings. Itâs important to understand that despite what your narrative may suggest you have a hard time talking because you keep focusing on how out of your depth you feel and not the other way around.
If you need to start with something figuring out how to laugh and when without understanding whatâs being said by simply looking at the tone, facial expressions and timing of others will make you feel much more comfortable and connected with others because first of all they will feel that you are connecting with them. Then you can work on your facial expressions more in general, where you should look and how. At that point even if you donât understand anything and never speak youâll feel a legitimate part of the group simply through aligning with the proper vibe. The stress will disappear and you can work to get more cognitively involved depending on your propensity and willingness.
I canât promise you that youâll be the life of the party or that you will necessarily enjoy yourself but you will fit in and go unnoticed in a good way.
My best friend tells me Iâve become much more reactive compared to before this whole thing started. There is way and way to just exist. If you feel at ease your kids will perceive that. Lots of dads arenât the living heroes their kids would like. I almost donât speak to my father, we never do anything together, but one thing is for sure, a dull and boring dad beats a dead one. Find the good things about your life and youâll have appreciation to pass on to your children even if you canât pass on to them memories of a dad larger than life there are lots of good father figures you can still fit into but first of all you have to find ways to feel at peace with your current situation instead of constantly coming up against your failed expectations and that starts with letting go of them.
Happy new year!
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I can relate to how your feeling I just went through it. I think the lamictal is helping, it lifts depression so Iâm feeling a little better. Tell your pdoc how you really feel there are things that can help.
Iâve never had negatives before throughout the 6.5 years of my illness luckily.
I take all kinds of vitamins that raise dopamine and serotonin and choline and norepinephrine in the brain
I also take many others for my health
I spend around $300 a month on vitamins
They take care of my negatives. But make positive symptoms more pronounced and intense at times but my antipsychotic keeps them in control.
I was at the point where I had no thoughts feelings emotions or ambitions or will and no love for myself. I wished I never came into existence and constant thoughts of death and suicide
Now I have love for myself and ambition and emotions and donât want life to end.
I enjoy the moment of each day and accept its challenges and am thankful I am alive. I also have anger and frustration and get tormented and have even hatred but it is better to me then absolutely nothing.
I was so used to suffering from negatives that it still effects my new habits. I even desire weeks just to be by myself and just exist and be left alone because I was so accustomed to suffering from negatives.
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I was very similar to you when I was your age. As I got older the pain diminished somewhat. Life can get better.