Newly diagnosed schizophrenic here .
The delusions are being managed by medicine , but I have a hard time dealing with the negative symptoms . Serious Lack of motivation, anhedonia , and cognitive problems
I used to love playing video games , but now I can’t feel comfortable while playing . It’s like my mind has become slow . The controls feel difficult .
Also used to make aircraft models , loved following the instruction manual , which used to be 20 pages long , now Even if look at one page of instructions I feel irritated . It’s like my brain can’t process the diagrams and instruction any more
Kindly provide some tips to deal with these negative symptoms .
I have severe negative symptoms, I stay in bed all day everyday, only get up to eat, I became obese gaining 155lb. My pdr said there is no meds but coffee helped me not sleep all day and stay on this forum in my bed.
Do you experience lack of thoughts? Problem running multiple thoughts in mind. If think of something other thought fade from mind etc.
Do you experience blunted affect. For example previously if you get some exciting news like got lottery you get excited, heart beats faster etc. Now if same news get feel less emotions, no excitement etc?
The issue is that I don’t even have the motivation to exercise, you need to achieve a motivation threshold to be able to exercise and there is no meds to achieve this threshold according to my pdr and my expreience with many meds.
How is your night time sleep quality? Blunted affect can be reduced if you able to improve your night time sleep quality. Certain supplements are there for improving sleep but can’t type here as its against forum rules.
I think cognitive symptoms are also linked to poor sleep quality. So make an effort to get deep restful sleep at night. 8 or 9hrs of uninterrupted sleep helps.
Certain helpful habits to achieve this include.
Avoid caffeine beverages after 6 PM like tea, coffee etc. Avoid naps during day. Try to remain as much busy during day time. Not engage in any activity 1 hr or 30 minutes before going to sleep as mental activity makes it hard to fall asleep at night.
I used to have very severe negative symptoms, but they are now properly managed with risperdal, vraylar, and celexa. Abilify also helped, but not as much as this med combo.
Haldol injection, clozapine and Solidon, among others.
I don’t know how it happened. It’s not the meds, it’s the philosophy of my psychiatrist, less meds if possible
I’ll be honest. I think the solution to overcoming negative symptoms is healing the blood-brain barrier. It’s working great for me so far. I’m able to do lots of things in the house since healing my BBB with PEMF and Daily Essential Nutrients. Also my symptoms are super low now. Lots of dead air between auditory hallucinations now.
i tried gaba based supplements and felt nothing meaning it doesn’t passed through my blood brain barrier to feel the effect. so its showing blood brain barrier is fine though i have negative symptoms for a long time now.
I used to have negative symptoms but over time they have got much better. The right medication and forcing myself to do things helped. (I’m on aripiprazole if your wondering)
Building model planes sounds like an amazing hobby. (I build and paint warhammer…)
Maybe try force yourself just for half an hour a day to try and build.
Fully awake and fully asleep. This is how normal people go through the 24 hrs. When they awake from sleep they slowly go to fully awake mode and this continues till reach sleep time and at that time they get intense urge to sleep, no longer able to remain awake etc and they fall to sleep and awake next morning with no awareness of how night gone. This is how I used to sleep and remain during day before I had negative symptoms.
I found over the years especially when negative symptoms appeared this ability to rapidly shift from fully awake to fully sleep reducing. At night no urge to sleep and need to force myself to go to bed otherwise I remain awake till morning. Same way when awake from sleep need to force myself to get out of bed otherwise it continue till noon.
My conclusion from my case is I am not fully awake during day and this why unable to multitask, remain alert etc and only certain part of the brain is awake and rest of it still in sleep mode. In dreams also normal people not multitask or have other thoughts during dreaming and the reason is brain not fully awake and this lack of fully awake even during day time is the reason for cognitive issues and negative symptoms.
So in my opinion to improve cognition and negative symptoms we need to emulate to normal mode that is to remain fully awake during day time and remain fully asleep during night sleep time. During day time we can use stimulants like caffeine beverages or others to remain alert. Several substances are there which promote wakefulness both in prescription category and in supplement category. Similarly take substances which gives deep restful sleep at night. These also include several in prescription and supplement category.