If we let sz totally define us, no wonder we don’t want anyone to know. We need to think of our identity in other ways.
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I don’t let sza define me. Nobody knows about it in my world. You guys are the only ones who know about my diagnosis, except my family. But, they don’t count because they don’t believe in my diagnosis anyway. My family thinks that I need to quit “owning” it and it will magically disappear.
I think for me it is hard not to let my illness define me when I’ve never known life without it, so it’s a big part of me and has greatly shaped who I am today, mostly in a negative way.
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yeah, but @Anna, that can change.
I wish it could change but I don’t see how it will because I can’t find any medications that work for me without giving me terrible side effects
I hardly know who I am outside of this illness. I don’t actually know what parts of me are me and what parts are illness.
Sza doesn’t define me at all. No one knows except for my wife a little and she considers me normal except for not working and trouble with shower. I’m so good I could probably go off my aps and lithium and Ativan, but not modafinil and be totally fine… for a couple weeks. Then I’d probably go completely mad. But with my meds I’m good
Anna what if you take LOWER doses of multiple aps. Any thought s on how that might work?
It’s not that medications don’t WORK for me, I have found meds that work for me and help reduce my symptoms but they simultaneously give me terrible side effects so I can’t stay on them.
Being on a subtherapeutic dose wouldn’t help me, I would just then be getting side effects from multiple meds without any benefit.
Try brainwashing yourself with another idea, autosuggestion. Anything like “I’m a student” or “I’m a reader.” or anything that challenges you a little. a cook, a pet owner, etc.
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I’m not saying subtherapeautic, just sub side effects dose if such exists. Like I’m on 6mg of invega and my dr wanted to bump me up to 9mg and I said no, I don’t want the risk of side effects. Same thing with serequel, I was on a higher dose with side effects so we lowered it to 100 mg. Same with lithium, I’m on 750 mg but if bp symptoms appear I could bump that to 1500 where I might be shaking and zombified , but when ok again lower back down
I’ve tried that before but then what happens is the low doses don’t work so I’m not getting any bad side effects but I’m not getting any good effects either. It defeats the purpose of being on the med. 
@PinCushion that is a good idea, I should make myself a mantra, thank you
The invega did take 6 months to reach effects so it definitely wasn’t an over night transformation, but I could notice some stuff after the first couple of weeks
When I was on 40 mg daily of geodon I was seeing really good improvement in my negative symptoms but not my positive, I was still being tormented by demons every night…and I had been on it 30 days with no sign of improvement…so I sort of had to go up. And actually now that I’ve been on 80 mg daily for a couple weeks I haven’t had a night of demon harassment in a while now, I think Plague has shown up before and like tried to say stuff but it wasn’t as aggressive and constant/loud as it was before. So now I’m noticing some decrease there but I’m still hallucinating pretty strongly visually and today I was having paranoia that someone broke in while I was showering. But I’m also under a lot of stress right now so that could be doing it too.
I’m an uncle, a brother, a nephew, a son, a godfather, a cricketer, a human, a secular humanist, an ex catholic, a forum member, a citizen of Australia, an ex-husband, an ex step dad ( my step daugther is still in my mind my step daughter), an Australian, a Queenslander, and many other things besides…
But I’m also schizophrenic.
That doesn’t define who I am…just adds to my flavour!
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Schizophrenia is a medical condition but really your occupation, education, marital status & wealth ought to define you.
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This was always a strange topic for me. I always thought “of course sz defines me. Anyone suffering from anything is defined by that experience.”
But you mean what we identify as. Or what we choose to accentuate about ourselves.
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My mental disorders shape who I am; without them I wouldn’t be the same person. I identify as someone who has these things and I don’t see how it’s different than someone who identifies as a professional kayaker or whatever.
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I listened to a lecture on identity and it’s far more than what’s in our heads, I think it should be more along the lines of what we do. But in actuality identity is a combination of what we think and what everyone else around us thinks of us. Identity is really a shared idea, the composite of all reflections on who we are. Point is, we are not simply who we think WE are.
No we don’t. At least I don’t. I don’t tell anybody about it. The only people who know about it in my life are my family (and they don’t take it seriously, which is good I guess), and my care team, and you guys.
I don’t let my Schizophrenia define who I am, but unfortunately it is a part of me.