I feel useless. If I stay home, I can’t even watch a TV show or a movie, because my concentration is so bad. I can’t read books anymore. How do I spend my time? I feel like I can hardly do anything because of my lack of motivation and lack of concentration.
How do you deal with negative symptoms? How do you cope? What do you do to get by, day by day?
Edit: trying to be less negative
I’m trying to see if I can handle Welbutrin, it really helps with focus for me. My doctor said something about stratera, if Welbutrin doesn’t work out, but I don’t know anything about that drug. Other than getting a med specifically for the negative symptoms I don’t know what to say. I try to stay sharp with games that challenge my mind but I spend at least two hours a day vegging out.
Do you feel happy?
I feel happy about half of the time. Why? I have schizoaffective bipolar type.
Maybe you need wellbutrin for motivation. I don’t know if you can mix AD and wellbutrin
I’ll ask my doctor about it. 
I use Alpha GPC for negatives and it works pretty well
It’s similar for me. I have concentration only for about 1/2 a movie at a time and reading I can’t even bother with anymore. My motivation is good but my energy is low so I don’t get a lot done at home. You’re probably better than me but besides getting what I have to done, I just go out everyday. Sometimes it’s just for tea, sometimes hiking, sometimes support groups or day treatment, sometimes just the library. Maybe you can find a fun community activity like yoga or support group. Just do something you think is fun??
I’m struggling too. I do dishes and laundry and cook dinner. I do the kids bathroom every other week. But I really should also do the floors more often but I just feel lazy. I also let my husband clean out bathroom because you have to scrub the walls we have really hard and he does it better. Plus he does it every few days. I feel bad about it but I just don’t have it in me to do our bathroom. I’m fat and I’m not feeling good about it. I haven’t been exercising either. I’m not feeling good about myself at all.
Same here your not alone
LS! I had exactly the same problem a couple of years ago. I was lying in bed all day with my eyes closed. I did not feel bad though. But I recovered somewhat. One day March a year ago I could suddenly read books again. If I watch TV with somebody else present I just can watch it. I took up exercise; today is the fourth time I go to the gym, for ten months I trained at home. I wish you the best!
I have been taking art therapy and it’s a lot of collage tearing picture out of magazine. This seems to keep busy for 2 or 3 hours. I don’t dwell on my schizophrenia. Maybe you could something like scrap book making. Give it a try and you might find it useful
@Blossom write down a schedule and follow it, it’ll help alot. For example,
You’d be surprised how much it’ll help once you write stuff down.
Hope this helps…
Dexedrine is the only thing that has helped my negative symptoms.
Hi, I remember reading in some other thread that you’re on vraylar. Isn’t that helping at all with your negatives? I just got started myself with vraylar/reagila under the promise that it would help with such symptoms. We’ll see.
I’m not sure if that post was about me.
But vraylar helped with that for the first month but once I got used to it that went away.
I’m no longer on it for various reasons.
The question was for the poster, but I am grateful for any additional testimony.
I’m currently in the process of switching from Vraylar to Invega. Vraylar had helped some with my negatives, but my negatives have slowly gotten worse over time. I don’t know if Invega will fix me or not, but I’m mostly looking for ways to cope right now with the negatives. I hope Vraylar works well for you.
You could try buspar. In clinical trials after 6 weeks negative symptoms were shown to be decreased
I dunno, some days it feels like all the threads have come undone & all I can do is lie in bed searching the ends to put back together. Some days esp when work/school has me on a regular schedule I am feeling very centred & get an exceptional amount of very good & inspired work done. I figure that it all averages out to a typical amount of productivity. If my work weren’t so flexible about my hours idk honestly what I’d do. For the “messy” days my therapist suggests a “bookends” approach. I have a cat so feeding her 2x a day makes for good bookends, but I like it when I can tack on more to it like e.g. take out the trash or have a shower. I’m learning how to not get down on myself for the days when I can only get the bare minimum done. That helps a lot cause when I do it tends to make it worse & I spend more time lost in the noise than if I just allow myself those days & trust that I have enough support in place to guide me back to clarity. I guess fyi I have an sz diagnosis but I don’t take meds. I have only completely unravelled & lost myself once but it was way before I started to get help for all this. I think if I found myself back in that place for a long time & nothing I could do could help I would def try meds. I dunno if this is helpful…sorry it’s so long! I just wanted to express that I relate.