I grew up with psychosis. It alienated me from other people, to the point where I never felt human because of how vastly different my experiences seemed to be compared to others and how alone I felt with them. Also living in a different world than the people around you tends to be alienating in itself. I learned not to talk about what I experienced because people either shrugged it off as imagination, or laughed at me.
Around 10 I started experiencing my first feelings of depression and at 13 I had my first major episode that lasted around a year. I feel it helped me develop a sense of compassion and a desire to help others, I never wanted anyone to suffer as I had. (Though compared to what I would go through later my first episode seems tame in comparison.)
In high school I had my first major psychotic episode, I think I was 16. I was always lost in a flurry of delusional beliefs and a weird alternate reality but this was really different, it was all encompassing, terrifying, extreme. I was experiencing vividly being violently sexually abused every night and many days by demons or evil spirits as well as very paranoid beliefs and fears. I felt like a zombie in normal life having to pretend like I was a normal teen girl experiencing normal teen things when in reality I was living in constant fear and suffering.
I ended up developing ptsd from it all and wound up suicidal at 17. After a final failed attempt at getting my parents to take me seriously and get me help I took matters into my own hands and sought help from the school psychologist, though I was very careful in what I shared as at that point I had gained awareness (due to a friend’s intervention) that I may have a psychotic disorder and was terrified of being put away in some mental institution for the foreseeable future. So I kept topics discussed mostly to family and school related stress. It helped a lot to finally be able to talk about my feelings.
My freshman year of college I was finally free to get therapy out from under the eyes of my well-meaning but ultimately emotionally stifling parents. Again I was careful, worried to be deemed insane and locked up. To me, I was not insane, I was a very sane person dealing with an insane mind that caused me to have bizarre and very upsetting experiences I didn’t know how to deal with. However I began to realize that leaving out the psychosis symptoms was not helping me-it was only isolating me further and not getting me the correct help I needed. So my sophomore year of college I finally admitted through a sob session that I suspected I had psychosis, didn’t know what to do and needed help. I would like to say that’s when things started getting better, but really things started getting better after I initially gained insight after my first episode. Now was when I came to the unfortunate realization of the limitations of the mental health system when dealing with psychosis-most professionals don’t know how to deal with it and their only experience with it is with those far off the deep end sequestered away in hospitals and institutions. No one knew quite what to do with someone like me-clearly seriously impacted by and suffering from my symptoms, but lucid in regards to my condition and able to function adequately. Mostly I was my own therapist and developed my own coping mechanisms and understanding of my symptoms, and used therapy more as a place to vent so I wouldn’t have to fester in my experiences and emotions and wouldn’t have to subject my loved ones to the stress of them.
By the time I was 20 I finally agreed to try medication and had mostly negative experiences. The side effects tended to be so severe that my functioning was actually worse on the meds than off of them, and the decrease in quality of life from my symptoms was replaced by decrease in quality of life from my side effects. However brief windows of time where my symptoms vanished allowed me to see the potential in medication, a symptom-free future that no amount of therapy or self work could offer me-if only I could find a combination that was more helpful than harmful.
It took me 2 years to I will say tentatively find this medication combination. I say tentatively as I still have not been on my antipsychotic long enough to fully trust something will not go terribly wrong with it. But my other medications I am fairly confident in. Receiving a diagnosis of and treatment for narcolepsy & delayed sleep phase disorder at 22 also helped vastly with my functioning and quality of life, as I realized many of my symptoms weren’t actually due to mental illness at all but rather this debilitating sleep disorder combination, which could also exacerbate my true mental illness symptoms.
Today, age 23, I am living a generally stable and peaceful life. I go to school, I work, I have a relationship, friends. I have future goals and dreams. I am different from those around me only in that my struggles have been a bit more bizarre than most. I am as capable if not more capable than many without mental illness. I am driven, I am resilient, I am adaptable and I refuse to let my disorders be disabilities. There are those who believe those with mental illness are somehow subhuman, dangerous, that they have nothing to contribute, can’t be trusted or relied upon, that they should all just be locked away out of sight. Especially people struggling with psychosis. Those people are wrong and I am determined to be living proof of that.
I have schizoaffective disorder, ptsd, narcolepsy and delayed sleep phase disorder. And I am sane. I have a 3.6 gpa and a degree in neuroscience. I am going for my second degree to become a nurse. Someday I am going to do research that is going to help change things for others like me with mental illness and sleep disorders. And I am not going to let ignorance or the fear and stigma it creates stop me. I am not going to let statistics stop me because I know I am not a statistic. I know who I am and I know what I am capable of and I will not let anyone, be they average joe, professional or institution, tell me otherwise.
summary: I’ve made posts like this probably 100 times before but this one can be for the newer folks who don’t know me 
Basically I’ve had psychosis my whole life and don’t have memories of not living that way, I’ve struggled with depression since early adolescence, my first psychotic episode was so bad it gave me ptsd and wrecked me and I’ve had sleep disorders that went untreated and undiagnosed on top of all the rest my whole life but I haven’t let it stop me and was always of the mindset that I wouldn’t let my disorders become disabilities and did everything to fight that. Today I’m very stable and high functioning after a lifetime of fighting and am determined to help change things for those with similar struggles to both improve their lives not only internally but externally as well by making the world more accommodating and educated in these issues. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that because you have so and so you should just give up on your goals!! Don’t let people’s ignorance hinder you!! Never stop fighting for the life you want to live!!
thank you!