Here is my first post and I am going to jump right into it. Some of my posts may be more outlined, but this one is more a stream of thoughts that I wanted to share so here is my version of breaking the ice. Enjoy.
A lot of people might say that being well adjusted with schizophrenia looks like meds & maybe it means taking them for some people or for certain amounts of time, but that is more of a habit or practice. I think of mindset(s) when I think of being well adjusted; Am I feeling okay about my situation? What would I want to change? Is there anything I would not want to be well adjusted to?
Most if not all of the mindset philosophies out there that I have heard of are good for someone and many are good for schizophrenics. I don’t know about you, but I have felt very othered in my mental health journey and often quite isolated. This seems to have normalized a continued, self imposed othering that has been difficult to break away from for me. Of course philosophies good for people are good for schizophrenics, we are people. The isolation of seeing and hearing that which others do not, has become part of my identity that I feel an intense need to protect. It feels integral to me and I cannot decide if it’s a part of me that I would ever fully want to walk away from. Though a lot of it is horrible, a good chunk and the longest prevailing parts have been full of wonder and beauty.
SO many topics there are to discuss… I think I will start with an overarching sense of doing something wonderful and when I am not on the path that has me actively engaged in this bigger-than-me wonderful endeavor, I feel intense restlessness and urgency to get back to working on the goal until I do. I do not know if this is classic “Illusions of Grandeur” stuff, but it is benevolent at best and staving off boredom and apathy at worst.
So I write because I have to express myself in order not to get too caught up in my emotions. Though I will be the first to tell you that I cannot and will not prescribe any system to cure your schizophrenia. I think of schizophrenia as more of a label on a set of symptoms that make some conversations more streamlined. I am bright, beautiful and messy in all the ways that people are and so do not fit neatly into clinical language qualitatively. I can see a use for the label in clinical settings, but it does not need to be the only language that I have on hand for this subject. When clinical language is the only means I have to describe my experience to others it can be difficult to 1) See yourself in non clinical terms. 2) Fend off a host of reactions to having such a language barrier. 3) Keep from feeling further isolated over time.
I cannot sell you cures for schizophrenia, but mindset shifts and personal growth have led me to healthier mental spaces that I had only hoped and held out faith that I could reach. I have faith that a great many things are possible and so why can’t as many people who want to shift their mindset towards being healthy, growing and well adjusted do so? Isn’t this work especially important when someone feels off kilter or in a rut? Sometimes when I think of my schizophrenia, I imagine being a vehicle that has an immense amount of knobs and levers for me to adjust in order to find my most functional self. The experience of on the go learning is my manual for operating these instruments. They can adjust pretty much anything whether it be general big adjustments or more nuanced settings. Looking around it can seem as though others have their lives more together, but is this an illusion? Here is one place where a gap can form and I feel like I am separating from my community reaching out into isolation. Sometimes I remind myself that they might just not be able to see all these nifty navigation knobs and levers and buttons on this control panel in front of me and so their movements are seemingly quicker and needing different amounts of thought. These knobs are another level of what it means to be well adjusted for me.
So my aim here is to write down some of my thoughts on this experience of having a diagnosis and navigating it since its there. Ignoring it only serves to take up more time in my thoughts. I may write a bit about education around what schizophrenia is, but I am not a clinician and many people who are have written about these terms medically, I am here to share my experience of the situation and dwell less on all the ways that it can affect my life by pulling it into the huddle with every other part of my life instead of telling it to hit the bench. I May also write about hobbies or art or music and my love of good design at times because these are life. Expression breathes fresh air into my environment that can be very difficult to match, good thing I don’t need to.