Living with an illness can be challenging, whether it is physical or mental.
Finding a way to overcome an illness, or at least finding a way to live peacefully with it, is something that takes a while to achieve. Around the age of 13, I was taken to a hospital and diagnosed with Paranoid-Schizophrenia with Depressive side effects.
With this illness came a constant wave of paranoia, hallucinations (both auditory and visual), distorted vision, and many other smaller symptoms, before and after the diagnosis. With the help of medication, I was able to combat these symptoms and live a semi-normal life.
The medication isn’t a miracle medicine, in other words it does not cure the illness. It keeps the symptoms at bay and allows me to function at school, in the workplace and in everyday life. I have to take the medication every night, because it causes drowsiness, so I use it to help with sleep.
Risperidone (an antipsychotic), is required daily, to help dull symptoms, it is not a one time use. Much like physical therapy for a physical illness is needed to heal, medication and therapy help heal the mental illness, but they do not cure it. Paranoid-Schizophrenia is something I will have to battle for a long time.
The illness has brought many things that act as barriers to my life and keeps me from achieving different goals. One barrier is that the illness makes it harder to obtain knowledge and keep it in my head. To combat this, I read books to increase my learning capability and the barrier that keeps me from learning has slowly fallen away.
Throughout my life with this illness, I have tried to keep myself happy, and find little things in life to make my mind stay at peace. Besides the medicine helping me, I have turned to learning, music and writing, and occasionally acting.
With learning I look at my Majors which are Sociology and Journalism. These majors constantly keep me on my feet. I also play guitar, bass guitar and I sing. With writing, I write for the paper, and also I am working on writing books on the side, or short stories. These keep my mind distracted and help me keep a clear head.
My mind is at all times flooded with thoughts, ranging from good to bad, as a average person has, but my mind tends to double, sometimes triple the amount of thoughts. Not only are they doubled and/or tripled, but they are extreme when it comes to good and bad, and when you are trying to live peacefully, it doesn’t always help.
An example of what this is like, was something I demonstrated to my partner at Wal-Mart in the toy aisle a couple weeks ago. I pushed all the “try me” buttons on the toy cars and they started talking and singing all at the same time, and it sounded like gibberish. I then explained to my partner, this is what it sounds like in my head after I forget my medicine, or even just on a rather negative day.
With these extreme thoughts come mood swings, which make living harder, and sometimes cause trouble within relationships, whether it is with family, friends, or with my partner.
To combat the flooding of thoughts, I have taken up meditation. I do not meditate like people normally would though. When I meditate, I sit in my room at home, put on a record (Usually Pink Floyd’s The Wall), and I close my eyes and sort out every thought in my brain.
I go into my “mind palace” as Sherlock Holmes would call it, and I sort out my life. I go through every event from the current month and try to solve all my problems. In the end, I open my eyes feeling relieved and get about five to six hours of peace in my head.
All of these coping mechanisms have been helpful to me, and hopefully those struggling with mental illness find coping skills to help them as well.
– National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1- 800-273-8255
-National Alliance on Mental Illness: 1- 800-950-6264