What do you think he meant? He asked if I could have been bipolar but my earlier doctors and psychiatrists and even myself thought it was schizophrenia and I know what bipolar is (my brother has it) and I certainly am not that.
It’s your right to seek a second opinion. If you don’t like him, then try and see someone else. I probably wouldn’t appear to be either in a brief meeting, but that’s because I am forced to hide it from so many people. People will just must assume I am just a ■■■■and have a defective personality.
Maybe it just means you don’t act like the usual schizophrenic he runs into.
Maybe you give off a more normal vibe?
Vibes bro, vibes.
Take it like a compliment. You can pass for normal.
But if a pdoc doesn’t do what you want, fire them if you can. You are the consumer and deserve the best that helps you.
That could be taken two ways…
In his pro opinion you might not be Sz
OR
You are doing so well your not like other patients he’s working with.
When my doc says “you know… Lately… I have a hard time remembering your Sz.”
I don’t take that to mean his memory is going. I take that to mean… I’m getting better.
I have grown and I am working towards getting better and getting symptoms under control.
Plus… he met me when I was young and in hospital… He knows full well how bad off I used to be.
About that normal vibe: Some folk might look at some people with mental illness and think that those people seem to have it altogether. In reality, they could be dealing with all kinds of stuff on the inside. Some folk may not look like or sound like what they’ve been through or their going through.
I once went to the gp to discuss my negative symptoms. He took one glance at me and said I don’t look like someone who suffers from negative symptoms. Go figure
I am sorry, but there are some mental health professionals that have very little experience working with schizophrenic patients.
They may see them in Hospital or Ward settings - very ill patients, but when it comes to private practice settings they have little to no experience, so they dont know what to expect from SZ patients.
I had a therapist in the past who thought that SZ patients were incapable of forming romantic relationships - she stereotyped and stigmatized, some will do this
Are you on meds right now? Have you been on meds for some time? Is your life less stressful because you left home (or went back), changed jobs, got into or out of a relationship, etc? Did you take up smoking gange (or something else)… or quit? Are you doing some high-efficiency psychotherapy like DBT, ACT, MBSR, MBBT, MBCT, or, or, or?
One does well to look at the intervening variables, because they tend to change over time. Some of us are more “nature” than “nurture,” so our “illness” tends to stay more stable regardless of such variables. Others are more “nurture,” and may find that increases or decreases on stressors make a lot of difference.
Probably meant you don’t have negative symptoms. That’s how they decided I wasn’t sz because I didn’t have negative symptoms, just positive and some cognitive.
Negative symptoms like flat affect can be a dead giveaway of sz…