Sort of. I was rather stable before and my emotions were in alignment with me. Schizophrenia came along with realization problems, after all a compromised realization is pretty much necessary for psychosis to take hold, imho, the question is just whether the issues on realization are noticeable or too subtle to be recognized.
Taking meds over time brought about a slow but progressive process of emotional independence throughout my body, very often for example my left arm will feel its own emotions in relation to what’s going on, and while I remained mainly emotionally stable these let’s call them dissociated parts of my body can be exceedingly vulnerable emotionally, have crippling anxiety, panic attacks etc. it’s rather weird though because I can’t say I’m suffering from anxiety because it’s not systemic but I do feel everything my left arm feels, to use the same example, so it’s not unlike holding a child who is having a panic attack, with the added difficulty that I’m also feeling everything it feels although limited to a given area, in this example the left arm. Conversely sometimes I will “feel” something but no part of my body will actually feel it with me, for example I may be sad or want to scream and my whole body, head included, will be chilling leaving my emotions to be just an idea unable to be expressed, I’ve thrown more than one temper tantrum complaining and sobbing with no tears half-laughing about how I want to feel sad but can’t. It feels like needing to scream but having no mouth, you feel perfectly good but you also really really don’t, it’s maddening and it can easily lead to self-harm, although it hasn’t gotten that far yet.
On top of this there’s also a good side of this same coin, parts of my body have started expressing opinions, sort of. Basically whenever I express or interpret something there’s a chance, if I’m alone and relaxed, that some parts of me will endorse it by producing a localized warm and fuzzy feeling or disavow it, at least in part, by basically creating a similar connection and drawing my attention but staying inert, weird thing is I almost always agree with them, it’s like playing a guessing game about what I think with my body going hot or cold like in the children’s game.
Basically schizophrenia turned my body into a democracy of sorts. I also gained a bunch of control over my internal state, I won’t get into details because I have no clue what I’m actually doing, but basically I can relax, contract or redirect internal stuff and for example this gave me the magical perk of being able to prevent headaches, I used to suffer from migraines periodically and now whenever they start I can just relax what’s being contracted, redirect stuff to lighten the load of what’s being overworked and I haven’t had to suffer a single headache in years.
As far as the cognitives go yeah, those sting for me too and what’s worse if I don’t keep my brain through the paces many cognitive abilities I have seem to be on the you don’t use it you lose it trend, for example my focus, which forces me to maintain a recurring training regiment just to make sure things don’t spiral out of control.
