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Negative symptoms of schizophrenia offer a harsh reality for me. I noticed a change in my ability to feel emotion shortly after I began exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia but long before formal diagnosis. I was well acquainted with feelings of depression and anxiety related to surviving child sexual abuse, but this was different. I lost interest in activities I formerly enjoyed, I no longer felt like associating with others and I felt a tremendous sense of indifference towards life in general. I was experiencing negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
I have to know how to cope in winter to help lessen my seasonal affective disorder (SAD). By the end of February, the majority of people in the United States assume that spring is really on its way. Depending on where they live, they might get a taste of spring weather in early March. In some places, however, winter weather can seem to linger on forever. Read this article to learn about how the winter has affected my depression and what I am doing to cope.
When you lose hope because of bipolar depression life will feel impossible. I know this impossible feeling all too well. I know what losing hope feels like all too well. But I also know what surviving it feels like. Here's my message for when bipolar depression makes you lose hope.
It’s National Eating Disorder Awareness week, so this seems like a good time to address the connection between complex posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and eating disorders. Research has shown a very strong correlation between the two. Just as people who live with complex PTSD often self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, some people use eating disorders as a form of coping as well.
Failure. It's not a nice word, is it? For many of us, we see failure as a glaring red stop sign. "Go no further," failure tells us, "You are not good enough to succeed." But did you know Walt Disney's first animation company was dissolved within six months? That J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers? For both, failure was not a stopping point–they continued to try until they found success. How did they keep believing in themselves, instead of seeing failure as a message they couldn't succeed? They separated their work from their self-worth.
There is an explosion in pop culture TV right now depicting how abusers are grooming their victims for abuse and I have mixed feelings about it.
My Uncle Carl died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 81 on January 24. Everyone in the immediate family called him Buddy—so to me, he was Uncle Buddy. He was my mom’s brother. I loved him very much, and we had something very important in common—we both had schizoaffective disorder, and we're both more than our schizoaffective disorder.
Anxiety messes with memory. Have you ever worried about something that happened in the past? Have you fretted about something you did or didn't do that "probably" caused a current problem? Have you laid in bed, tossing in turning, running situations, conversations, and mistakes through your mind nonstop? These are some examples of anxious memories and how they can take over. You can regain control by resetting these anxious memories.
Most of the time, self-harm is not inflicted with the intention of causing serious damage, but even so, there are physical risks of self-harm. Typically, the resulting physical wounds of self-harm tend to be superficial, especially in those for whom self-harm is relatively new. However, self-harm has a way of escalating quickly and can, if left untreated, pose a physical danger.
I have a problem with stress eating. To be fair, during periods of high anxiety, my body seems to modulate between wanting to eat nothing and wanting to eat everything, but more often than not it seems to be the latter. Both are problematic, but obviously, stress eating leaves you more prone to weight gain and escalating grocery bills, so it’s worth getting under control.
I believe she will only be able to rid herself of her demons, and hopefully her BPD as well, when she's ready to confront the abuse of her father. If she can put the blame where it belongs, she may stop projecting that victim/perpetrator cycle on the present men in her life. These demons are a metaphor for the purgatory she has created for herself. That reality has consequences in the real world, but it need not be real in the tangible sense. Exorcising her demons will require the expenditure of real physical energy and probably the destruction of aspects of her personality. If this ever happens, and it's possible but not probable, then these demons will evaporate. They are only as real as one's personality is real. In short, reality is not the question, it's what you make of the things you feel to be real.