Lived Experience Forum

[Krishna]

Hi and welcome @Anon1975  I’m interested to know what form your recovery has taken apart from your meds? My daughter suffers from schizophrenia and has also lost all friends and has estranged herself from all her family despite our love and support. I’m happy to hear you are recovering and starting again wanting to connect with society. A hard isolating illness. Are there any groups in your area ie Mens Shed or community gardens where volunteers are required, Landcare or the like. You’d meet honest down to earth people in these spaces  whilst contributing to the community and environment at the same time. Just a thought. I hope you continue well on your path to a brighter future. 🙏❤️

[Gwynn]

I'm glad my post was helpful for you, @Anon1975 !  I'm glad you've got lots of things in your life that bring you hope, as well as a relationship with your partner.  Hope can grow over time. 🙂  There's some research that says that people rebuild their sense of selves after schizophrenia through doing identity work : finding community, developing a narrative around the illness, managing the illness, managing life and setting goals, work and study (can include unpaid work), and compensating for symptoms. 

When you say everyone has low expectations for you, is that inclusive of your care team?  The modern approach for recovery is to use a strengths-based approach - where everyone has personal qualities and strengths that can be used to improve the quality of their lives.  You might like to read up about "personal medicine", the activities that help us feel better and connect us with our purpose in life. Pat Deegan, a psychologist who lives with schizophrenia, described it in around 2005.  For me, my personal medicine includes knitting, volunteering and exercise, and doing my personal medicines has helped encourage me to take on situations that I previously found confronting.  I am concerned that the treatment seems to be a "rest cure".  While it is possible to throw yourself into personal medicine so much that you can overdo it and crash, meaningful activities are really useful in recovery.  Have you ever wanted to start a garden, do BushCare, or learn to woodwork?  Picking up a hobby where there's a lot of opportunities to learn new things while working with your hands is supposed to be really good for your brain. 

Maybe your friends and family aren't ready yet to hear your apologies, come to an understanding of schizophrenia, and take them to heart.  Maybe they'll never be ready.  It hurts, but you can't spend your life obsessing over what you did when you were psychotic because they can't hear and forgive you yet, because that will not serve you well. 

[Anon1975]

Thank you.  Regarding apologies, I wish I didn’t have to apologise and try so hard to get them to hear me.  I wish they understood.  I didn’t ask for this.  I certainly dont want it, and I miss my old life and how I use to be so much.

[Rhye]

Morning @Anon1975 and welcome to the Forums 😊

I can hear the pain in your post and I want you to know that even though these are words on a screen, they are written by people who genuinely care 💜 I'm a peer support worker in the forums and every day I see the true strength and resilience of our Forum members as they live with mental illness. Each one of us comes to the community with different circumstance, diagnoses, histories, religions, identities, but we are all bound by the common thread of a desire to not only live but to thrive with and/or despite the hand that was dealt when it comes to our mental illness. 

You, just like the thousands of SANE members, have the right to connection as well as to hope for a path towards recovery, whatever that may look like for you. It sounds like its still early days @Anon1975, and whilst I don't share your diagnosis, I do share the experience of living with a complex mental illness, and of the loss that has accompanied that, so I'm sitting here with you this morning and feeling right along side you, as well as championing you on to find your feet and to make those connections once more. 

Some people may fall away on our journey, but it truly provides us with the opportunity to foster new love and friendship with people who understand and can support you, just as you will them.

Here if you need a chat this morning.

Rhye ☘️

PS – if you put an @ before a members username they will get a message that you have responded to them, just like this @Rhye or @moderator. Just a little tip so your posts don't get lost 😊

[Gwynn]

@Anon1975, you have apologised.

Just because they've ignored your phone calls, your emails, your texts, your letters, your faxes, your telegrams, your smoke signals, and your carrier pigeons, doesn't mean you haven't apologised.

It is really tempting to keep on trying to contact people so you can apologise to them, but it's better to let them come to you, because when they come to you, as they will be more ready to hear what you've got to say with an open heart when they do.

You've sent them apology messages, they know where your contact information is. It is a hard thing to do to let it be and leave it in their hands, but it will help them put the past in the past.

What does a good life look like to you?

[Anon1975]

Thanks @Gwynn 

I am grateful for this forum today.  A good life?

where my diagnosis doesn’t sit at the front of my mind, where I am not worried what my future is going to look like, where I have enough money to travel overseas, where I have some kind of social life and friends!, where I am loved and in a living g home, where I have energy, where I am not looking for “signs” telling me what is going to be like in the future and that this existence of limbo will end, where I have connections.  Where I am happy to be alive and present in my life.

[RiverSeal]

Hey @Anon1975 

Welcome to the Forums and thank you for reaching out to the peer community!

I just want to say that what you have been through sounds extremely challenging but your strengths are carrying you forward nonetheless. Taking that first step to ask for support and being vulnerable by disclosing your mental health experience is not easy. I see that you have received some great support and thank you @Gwynn @Patchworks @Former-Member @Krishna Hope is so important to have and to spend time thinking about because can help hold a candle of light for when you can't see through the darkness.

Recovery and your journey are individual to you and your life experience and how you go moving forward each step on its path. People do go on to live meaningful and fulfilling lives after a diagnosis of schizophrenia. It's not easy and nobody would want to do it if there was a choice but we find ourselves having to live the lives we have. Grab hold of your desire to recover and recreate a life for yourself with friends, and connections and work towards your dreams. The Forums are a great place to start to understand your situation and to learn from other people's experiences with their own journeys. Peer connection can be an integral part of your recovery journey and has been a focus of my own recovery journey and now as. Peer Support Worker.

I would like to invite you to our Topic Tuesday on the 31/5/2022 here on the Forums to have a discussion about schizophrenia with peers from the Forums and some Peer Support Workers @Former-Member @TideisTurning . I will be answering questions and leading the discussion from my experience supporting people who experience schizophrenia.

https://saneforums.org/t5/Special-Events/Topic-Tuesday-Living-a-Meaningful-and-Fulfilling-Life-with/m-p/1174551#M13432 

Hope to see you on the night, if you are free to join!

Best wishes

RiverSeal

[Former-Member]

Hey again @Anon1975 @I’m 34 now and went into depression thinking about my friends who said we’d die for each other at one point, but that wasn’t simply true put to the test, my diagnosis. I have moved on since then and have reached out to them through work and they’d respond. Everybody wins situation like you pay me and I’ll give you mates rates, not like it was but something… only recently found the right meds and things are looking brighter, not like it was but better than the hell I went through finding the right meds. But I’m still figuring myself out and reintegrating back to life myself but on my own terms wish you all the best, didn’t want this illness myself but hey

[Anon1975]

Hi @Former-Member .

Thank You for your message.  Your so young to have this wretched illness.  My onset was at 42.  I have had my friends and family rallying around me this last week or so and their support and presence has been insurmountable in terms of lifting my spirits.  I am making peace with the friends and family that I have lost, and in all likelihood I dont have room in my life for non supportive people.  I am sorry it took a long time for you to find your meds.  I would imagine that the process would of been very heart breaking.  I really don’t know what else to say for me it’s about trying to find some meaning in my life once more and feeling incredibly blessed to have my sanity and my home as I came close to having neither.

[Former-Member]

Oh that’s a late diagnosis at least you got to experience being normal for longer than some, and great to hear your family is supporting you that’s what’s carried me on, now in return I will do as they wish of me, which is they just want what’s best for me, which is terms I can live with. I’m working these days and have so for the past 4 months doing 40hrs a week which I consider a slight win, surviving and not thriving at this point as I reintegrate back to society. @Anon1975