I’m just wondering why I can be so well for a few years add a bit of stress and trauma and I’m off the rails. I still am trying to get better! My goal is to get back to a semi normal level of functioning. PlayStation and just some of this and that I’m not expecting to much from myself ever agian! I think I have brain damage idk…
2 Likes
It’s as you’ve said. Stress/truama.
2 Likes
IDK the science of it but relapses can possibly be common and normal (a weird word to use in this case). Schizophrenia is episodic in the sense that the person can go through periods of intense symptoms lasting weeks or months
and then later feel relatively OK. I think most of us here experience this.
You answered your own question. Stress and trauma can make symptoms worse in many people.
In my own case I initially got diagnosed in 1980 at age 19, a typical age to get schizophrenia. I was pretty psychotic for the next 2 1/2 years and then became stable and got a job and a car and went to school. I lived my life for a few years with friends having fun (still suffering symptoms though) and then became addicted to drugs, specifically crack, in 1986. I used for about the next 5 years and had a terrible relapse in 1989. I suffered from the relapse for about a 1 1/2 years but then got clean in AA. I got a job, went back to school and slowly felt better, in fact those were the best years I had while in my disease. The 5 years after I got clean I worked, sometimes full time, sometimes part time, I enrolled in college again and was very social, traveling a little and hanging out with my sisters and their husbands and friends.
I think my relapse was due to my heavy drug use and drinking and at the same time some major life stressors probably added to the problem such as moving several times and moving from job to job and getting fired a lot. As soon as I quit drugs I was relatively OK.
3 Likes
Anxiety makes the voices in my head worse. Oddly, so does being super relaxed. I always have to find a middle ground. 
Since nobody mentioned it yet, sleep can be a deciding factor in triggering a psychotic episode or worsening an existing one.
I haven’t been well since my psychotic break. I hear voices and feel my psychosis in my brain. As soon as I get stressed my voices get worse and feel a flare up on symptoms.
For me psychosis is ongoing. It’s like a steep hill upwards that I’m trying to climb and it’s easy to fall back.
I envy those who have periods of normalcy.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.