Same here, even my psychiatrist finds it weird when I always tell him that medicine doesn’t work and I can barely get up after 12 hours of sleep and even small things like making tea look almost impossible to do. It’s not laziness, it’s a symptom and currently untreatable. Looking forward to cariprazine, MIN-101 and others, a few years down the road things will get better for us too. It has to.
I think my family don’t equate my laziness with negative symptoms, but rather think that I’m just lazy. But at least they don’t give me much flack for ‘being lazy’
Sometimes when I tell people that I have no drive or motivation they would just look at me and grin as if to say I’m lazy. I don’t like it when people think that way but on the other hand I can’t blame them cause I spend so much time in my room on my bed.
My mom finally understands the difference between laziness and negative symptoms after explaining it’s like depression, you can’t move. But I’m more active now, things are getting better.
I can’t say I’m very depressed(maybe mildly). Lack of drive and motivation has been an issue for years. Psychiatric notes c2003 have me mentioning it. I was told it could be a chronic symptom of my illness.
I think lack of motivation can have a lot to do with lack of mental energy. When you are not in that frame of mind you can do things which runs against the idea of it being merely laziness.
Both sides of my family think I’m lazy because I only work part time. But I know my limitations. And I still make close to 30k per year. So I just carry on.
People don’t understand what they can’t see in front of them. People ‘understand’ positive symptoms a little more because they can see when it is happening to someone because of their erratic behavior. But negative symptoms are insidious, meaning others cannot understand them as well.
My teachers, my friends, my parents, don’t understand why it’s so hard for me to go to school. And yet every day I get up and make the effort to go to school, but I usually don’t succeed in that I miss the last class even though it’s my favorite I’m just so burned out…
Even my pdoc has a hard time explaining or defining my lack of motivation to me.
There are very few effective treatment options against Negative Symptoms - I cannot take antidepressants because they will make me very manic and psychotic.
its tough but i find the only way to fight the negative symptoms is to have a mandatory schedule,
If I don’t have a schedule I will do nothing when im experiencing a negative wave.
caffeine helps to a degree, but if the symptoms are quite heavy then it doesn’t help as much.
what you said is pretty much what i experience, can sleep for many hours and then small things still seem impossible hard to get motivated to do.
for me it comes and goes, so mine probably has a mood aspect, cuz i do have periods where i am highly functional and motivated.
My ex boyfriend broke up with me due to my negative symptoms. He was very ableist and said I dont push myself hard enough. His way of thinking was I could somehow use another. Part of my brain to motivate me. Kinda like saying to someone with kidney disease to use another Part of the body to do whatever the kidneys do