A few weeks ago someone here said that there is no such thing as the negative symptoms (severe apathy). The person said we are frequently feeling tired and therefore don’t feel up to doing things.
I would now like to refute that. There really is a condition in which I feel like I don’t want to do anything.
I am on vacation from work and I feel very bored and apathetic. The negative symptoms are a real condition.
But I will try to overcome them.
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Yes, they’re definitely real, unfortunately.
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Wouldn’t “frequently feeling tired” be a negative symptom or are they arguing that severe apathy is not a negative symptom?
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I think the scientists who study the disease have noticed often patients have severe apathy. That is what they call the “negative symptom of schizophrenia.” They have not labelled “frequently feeling tired” as a negative symptom. I always thought the feeling tired was a side effect of my medication.
The apathy is the feeling that you don’t want to do anything at all. There might actually be things you could do, but they do not occur to the patient. This is the negative symptom that I am saying is real. I spend hours of just sitting or taking naps. For me it lasts hours. Before it would last days.
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There is even schizophrenics here who are ignorant about sz.
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They do exist. I have had a period in my life where it was really bad for years. It got better for me so it could for you also eventually. I’m just not sure what changed.
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I agree negative symptoms are real! I have terrible apathy and a bad case of no motivation. I think that the antipsychotic drugs just make the symptoms worse.
Some antipsychotics do cause fatigue.
My negatives got better over a period of about two years.
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i used to think i had mild or non existent negative symptoms but that was non acceptance and lack of insight
Negative symptoms are real. But…
The body adapts its energy levels to the energy you spend. If the negatives make you feel like lying in bed all day, that’s the only thing your body will create energy for after a while.
Especially with negative symptoms, we need to make sure we have things to spend energy on at regular intervals to keep our body able.
Also, negatives and meds can make us sleep for longer, and that coupled with low activity, will cause a drop in sleep quality and efficiancy.
Wake up after 10 hours of sleep, feeling like a train ran you over? You are not in need of more sleep, you are tired because you slept for too long. You are in need of doing more during the day, tiring yourself naturally.
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@Pikasaur What you wrote makes sense to me and I am in agreement.
As for waking up feeling bad, I think perhaps that is due to what transpired in the night. I blame it on dreams that we do not have a recollection of.
To me the idea of getting too much sleep is a theory and I don’t know if it is true. I have had sleep problems for many years, needing way too much, it seems. Now I have reduced my sleep to 7 or 8 hours a night.
The brain’s activity during sleep happens in cycles, and efficiancy decreases with each cycle. After 5-7.5 hours, you’ve completed the cycles you need.
Anything more than that, and the sleep isn’t as deep, nor efficient.
The REM is the dream stage of sleep.
The longer you sleep, the more dreams you’ll have.
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It’s a concept and that chart supports your concept. I am still not convinced. (Sorry.)
Perhaps the hardest thing for me was getting out of bed–every single day for about 20 years. So I increased my sleep trying to help. I got usually about 10 hours a night. That improved my awakening for a while.
It’s just hard for me to believe that if I set my alarm earlier I would have felt less sleepy.
For about 2 months now I have been getting up at about 4:00 am (7 hours of sleep). Sometimes I take a nap for one or two hours during the day or evening. This is working well for me now.
Sometimes I’m not sure if I have negative symptoms, or if I’m just demotivated.
It literally takes everything out of me just to go to work.
There are days where I can’t even peel myself off the couch, but I still have to show up to my job.
Between the massive anxiety and dread before I walk in, the need to hide from customers and coworkers while I’m on the sales floor, and just the physical tiredness overall, it’s almost too much to deal with some days.
@Schztuna That sounds pretty tough. When I look back over the years I see that I went through stages. The stage you are at right now might be almost impossible. I hope you won’t have to quit you job but if you do you might do better later in life. Or you might stay with your job, in spite of it all, and then your stage might resolve in a while.
I encourage you to stick it out if you can.
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Thanks for your reply @Here4You.
You say you went through stages-- what stages were those?
My negative symptoms (if that’s what this is) seem to fluctuate.
…I definitely have good days and bad.
But I will say that the added anxiety and dread definitely don’t make it any easier to show up to work when I’m already feeling bleh.
I hope you’re feeling better these days 
Not wanting to get off the couch could be what we call the negative symptoms. Or it could be due to depression. The anxiety and dread might be another aspect of your illness. This is not exactly what we would call the negative symptom. But it is still a symptom, and your doctor might be able to help.
When I say I go through stages, there are problems that have varied over the years. I have had my sz for 40 years. For example, I had depression for stretches, which at some points got better. There was a period, or stage, when I had long periods with complete boredom and nothing to do. There was a long stretch when I had severe trouble awakening. There was a long stretch when I felt tired almost all day long. That’s some idea of what I mean by stages.
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This is really interesting. I’ve been told that when I’m hallucinating (I’m told after the fact obviously) my eyes dart around a lot and my eyes “get big”. Is it possible that during the time I’m awake, I could be dipping into stage 1 of the sleep cycle momentarily? 
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