Negative symptoms or something else?

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Hi, I’m new here. My diagnosis is schizophrenia. I’ve known about this forum for a while now, but I guess now I want to hear some views on something that’s bothering me.

I feel like I’ve been in a process of losing everything that makes me who I am more and more as time goes on. Pretty much every day, for most of the day, I do nothing except alternate between pacing back and forth and sitting down. I guess it’s not like I do literally nothing, because sometimes I just feel like I need to do something at all, but when that happens all I can think of trying is things that I’ve liked in the past, such as video games or watching documentaries online. The problem is, I can’t do these things for very long now because they’re just not interesting or engaging like they used to be, so at best I get a small break from doing nothing at all but it’s not particularly fulfilling.

What’s weird is, no matter how much I tell myself that I must just be changing, it feels like all that’s happening is my mind is being wiped clean and left blank. I can’t seem to want to try anything new to do. I also can’t seem to force myself to try anything new if I don’t feel myself wanting it. It’s like my mind just shuts down at the thought of making myself try so I end up doing nothing. (I swear I mean it, I really think the usual “just do it” advice won’t work in my case.)

I’m hoping that somehow this problem is just due to the medication I’ve been on. With other antipsychotics I’ve been on, I’ve been capable of working and doing things sometimes in my free time, despite still having the pacing problem, but they were not working well on my positive symptoms. I’ve been on risperidone now for over a year, gradually going up to 6mg and staying on that for about 6 months, which has worked best so far on my positive symptoms, but I kept getting the feeling it was making it hard to do things in general. Recently I added 75mg of effexor, and it made me feel like I’m suddenly capable of working, so I got a job and tried, but didn’t last long. This made me think about the time I’ve been on risperidone and I realized that anything important I’ve tried on this medicine, I have not been capable of doing, so I brought this up to my psychiatrist and she agreed it would be a good idea for me to switch. I’m in the process of transitioning to latuda.

Anyway, has anyone here gone through something similar? If so, did you find it was helped by switching medications, or did you do something else about it? I’d greatly appreciate any feedback.

Thanks.

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Welcome to the forum. Good luck with the med change.

Yes, it’s difficult to tell where negative symptoms end and the side effects of meds begin.

I’m on abilify which is supposed to help with negatives but I don’t do much all day. However I’m stable.

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My psy said there is nothing for negative and cognitive symptoms. The best med for negatives is Abilify because its only only a partial dopamine antagonist. But Abilify can have serious side effects like multiple addictions sometimes.

Latuda does nothing for my negatives. I am on 80mg Latuda. Its only good for positive symptoms.

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Its negative and cognitive symptoms.

You can take supplements like omega 3 and phosphatidylserine soy version. These help with the cognitive symptoms. The key to break the negative symptom is to develop daily good habits or schedules and follow them without fail. Ex: sleep and wake at same time everyday, bath before going to sleep at night, exercise for at least 20 minutes daily etc. Important thing is to follow them daily without skipping. When you do it it becomes easy to follow though at first it seems tough. These habits, schedules help us to remain productive even though negative symptoms like blunted affect, lack of emotions, anhedonia there.

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