Have you ever thought that we a suffering so much in silence. Nobody knows how much we go through. I mean I’m having a terrible episode right now and nobody knows. It interesting because we go through hell and nobody in the outside world knows. Some cases where stories in the news you hear about people being abused by family or people being shot by someone. Then the outside has an idea. But it’s just us suffering so much and nobody has any idea. “Suffering in Silence” It’s just mind boggling to think that someone can suffer so much and nobody knows. You almost think that we deserve for the whole world to know, because we fight and perservere so much. It’s like “look at me I’ve been through mounds and mounds of battles you should know this” It’s just an interest concept that it is possible to suffer so much and nobody knows at all.
I feel the same way. Recently, when my mom was complaining about her neck pain, I told her, “My mental anguish is as bad as your physical pain.” We do deserve to be heard. That’s one of the good things about this forum. We can express ourselves and commiserate.
Mental illnesses are invisible. When one out of a million breaks out on a shooting spree, then people notice + think they need to do something so that doesn’t happen again, not really thinking about the other million - ’ suffering in silence.’ Or the ones of us housed in prisons. It would indeed take a lot of money or ingenuity to really fix these things.
I know precisely what you’re talking about…and I agree 100%. I think that stigma is due to our outward appearance; we often look like we are on drugs and we often behave like we are LSD, so people don’t see our suffering, they see us chain smoking and drinking coffee or whiskey and see us talking to ourselves, and they think “that person looks like they are on drugs and chose to take them”. We don’t chose to experience psychosis, but we make it through our episodes, except for the 10% of us who commit suicide within a decade of being diagnosed…
I have always lifted weights and been active, and now I am getting into powerlifting, as I seem to be pretty good at it for a beginner. I think that I do reflect my struggles in my appearance; I look strong. It’s a source of my drive, now that I am in remission and on medication…I live with a couple years of psychotic hell behind me, and I am not afraid of much except another episode. I do well in school and I only fear that stress will trigger an episode (it is known to do that).
I do sometimes think that schizophrenia is something like the hero’s journey, or monomyth, that most stories follow. We experience a living hell. I think that schizophrenia is the worst thing to suffer from. I would rather die right now from cancer than kill myself in a psychotic episode at some time in my life. People fail to grasp what insanity feels like…they only witness our behavior, but there are some videos on the internet that are accurate simulations of what schizophrenia is like. No one except a schizophrenic knows what words like “madness” and “crazy” and “insane” even mean. Remember that you need to live for yourself…no one will give you credit for making it. But you can make it and be satisfied with knowing that you have proven yourself in a way that other people never will. I am surrounded by people who are smarter than me (my friends) and stronger than me (the gym, I go to a competitive powerlifting gym and they’re all freakishly strong), but I don’t feel inferior, I feel like an old man in a 20 year olds body. You learn who you are and what you live for when you make it though schizophrenia.
I think that schizophrenics experience life in a way that is uniquely challenging. I love challenges and always have… But that’s just me. Sure, some people work hard and that’s their challenge. Mine is literally insane. Insanity is maybe the hardest thing to live with, so sometimes I feel content with being schizophrenic. I wanted to be a Navy SEAL before because their training is the most challenging experience aside from insanity…but I turned out insane and had to settle for recovering from a severe case of schizophrenia. I always wanted to prove myself to myself, and I did. Now I feel like a retired person. I feel like I am old on the inside.
I think it shows what we are made of, and we can just chuckle when we hear about other people’s problems and imagine what they would do if they tried to live life on a bad LSD trip.
They do know, they just don’t give a ■■■■, not about us or eachother, ohhhhhh they know.
I hear ya. I’m the only one I can talk to in my family about the pain I feel on the inside or all the scorn after the battles. I’m tired of being severely, unhealthily, and psychotically jealous of people while they just live there lives with not a care in the world. My life has actually been ruined. Everyone has passed me. I hate to be the one coming back to a family reunion as a hobo. Awhile ago I was homeless and completely suicidal talking out loud to the bullying voices in my head. I’ve given up on God and succeeding. I’m just not strong enough. Aside from the battling being one of the worst parts to schizophrenia I have to worry about everybody’s superficial outlook on my life. How they feel like the good guy who succeeded gratefully and they don’t know people like me fought as big as a battle in the slave days. I was way to sensitive to be hurt like that. Not only are you publicly humiliated your put to death and humiliated in your mind to. I’ve wanted to kill myself so many times suffering in silence.
A lot of people have it rough, it’s not a competition.
I am pretty open about my SZ and I get a lot of help from my family with my symptoms.
My sis didn’t say a damn thing about coughing up blood for months and got forced into hospital this last week with multiple stomach ulcers, anemia, iron deficiency and on and on.
Shut mouths don’t get fed. I’ve been trying to educate… explain rather then complain…
and talk about it. Some people around me don’t know because I haven’t told them
If I just write them off as stupid for not understanding, but then haven’t tried to explain or increase that understanding, then writing them off for not knowing seems a little bad cycle to me.
In my head… it’s like not teaching a person to read and then saying… those normies are so stupid for not knowing how to read.
Malvok is right… it’s not a competition.
I told my ex-wife after my first known psychotic episode that I was wrong to have judged that all temporary insanity defences were just a bunch of bull. I didn’t grow up with the illness but it was diagnosed years after a brain tumor was removed from my third ventricle.
Stigma in society is awful about schizophrenia…I wrote a book (small sales) about what I went through, so I feel like I at least “tried” to share with the world how awful we suffer and that most of us (99% of us) are not violent…