- Hi everyone, in today's video,
I'm going to be talking about,
whether or not I actually have schizophrenia.
(upbeat music)
Hi everyone, and welcome back
to the Living Well with Schizophrenia channel.
My name is Lauren, and I make videos about
what it's like to live with schizoaffective disorder
or schizophrenia.
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make sure to subscribe.
And also if you would like to help support
the creation of these videos,
please check out the link to our Patreon page.
Once you become a Patreon,
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where we offer peer support through various mediums,
such as text channels, and also weekly peer support groups.
So if this is something that interests you,
please check out the link to our Patreon page.
Okay, so a little bit of a clickbaity title,
because yes, yes, I do have schizophrenia.
Well, I have schizoaffective disorder.
And I realized that this video is probably going to
fuel the fire or fuel the flames
in terms of the small amount of people who criticize me
for faking or whatnot
And fine, I'm doing this because I think that
it's a really important component of the illness to discuss.
So what I wanna talk a little bit more about today
is kind of the feeling of,
especially when you're in a prolonged period of wellness,
which I am,
the feeling of kind of starting to question your diagnosis,
and question, if you really have schizophrenia.
And question, if during those periods of unwellness,
when you were very symptomatic, or in psychosis, or whatnot,
if that was really real.
And if it was all in your head
or you were actually faking it,
or you made up those symptoms afterward.
And this can be a really difficult thing
to kind of wrap your mind around.
And so we did a video on anosognosia.
And anosognosia is basically
when a person with a mental illness does not understand
that they have the mental illness,
or they cannot fully understand
what the mental illness means or entails.
And this kind of comes into play, where
you can't understand
that you were in a different state of mind at one point.
And I think that anosognosia is a really hard concept
for people who have never experienced it to understand,
because, how can you just completely shift
from experiencing these intense things
to then questioning if they really happen,
or questioning if you made them up?
And, I think that this is something
that I was a little bit embarrassed about for awhile.
It's been hard to kind of navigate that,
especially given the fact that I have a YouTube channel,
centered around my experiences with the illness.
And so then when I'm questioning,
well, do I actually have this illness?
That's kind of weird and hard to navigate.
But through our Discord community,
actually it has come up a lot
that this is actually a very common experience
for people who are living with schizophrenia
or schizoaffective disorder.
I think that psychosis is kind of a hard thing
to wrap your head around,
even if you've been through it yourself.
And it's hard when you're well
to understand that your brain could have worked that way
at one point;
effectively being in an altered state of reality.
And so it's very hard to understand that
that really happened,
and that you were really in that alternate state.
And you start to question, well, did I just make it up?
And the only comparison I can really come up with is,
if some kind of trauma happens and you question it later on.
So, if you had a really big fight with your partner,
or you are in the process of a divorce,
or if you were in a car accident, or a loved one died,
or anything kind of big and traumatic like that,
and then you wake up the next day
and you kind of question you, did that really happen?
Is this real? Can this be happening?
And I think that that feeling of questioning,
well, what's that really real?
Is kind of similar, anyway, to
the anosognosia that comes into play
when you start to question, well, did that really happen?
Was that really my experience?
When you start to question periods of psychosis.
And so it's a really difficult thing to navigate in terms of
understanding that this is part of the illness;
questioning whether or not you have the illness.
And so that's hard to deal with.
The way that I've kind of learned to manage this,
unfortunately, is through repetition.(chuckles)
The first time,
the first time I went through psychosis and then recovered
and was in a period of wellness, I was like,
"I think I made that up.
"I don't think that really happened."
And so then you kind of move into this period of,
"Well, I don't need medication then if I don't have it."
And so you start to
reduce your medication or go off your medication,
and then it happens again.
And then right after that, you're like, "Okay, I get it.
"It's real.
"Whenever I stopped taking my medication, it happens again.
"And so, I can't be making this up."
But then, you have more of a prolonged period of wellness
and you start to question it again and you're like,
"Well, maybe I made it up twice.
"Maybe I don't need medication again."
And so you'd go off medication and then it happens again.
And I think you understand the cycle
that I've kind of been stuck in,
and then I think other people get stuck in as well,
where you don't understand that your illness is real,
or don't want to believe that your illness is real,
so you go off medication and you become unwell again.
And so I think just having done this
numerous amount of times,
I've kind of learned that when I'm feeling this way,
it's normal.
It's normal to be feeling that way.
But I still understand that I do have the illness,
just because every time I've convinced myself that I don't
and gone off medication, it has not gone well.
And the symptoms have come back strongly.
Also, I just wanna touch on the fact that this feeling
can kind of be compounded,
if you have people in your life
who question your diagnosis as well,
who maybe don't believe the validity of your mental illness.
Talking to some people through our Discord community,
this is a common experience to
where they have people in their life
who just don't understand the illness
that they're living with, and so don't believe them
when they're expressing symptoms and whatnot.
And so having people in your life
who don't believe you can make you question it even more
and make you feel like, "Oh, well, maybe I am faking it.
"Maybe I don't have this.
And I don't really have anyone in my personal life
who questions my illness
or doesn't believe me that I have schizoaffective disorder,
but there are often comments on YouTube
of people questioning whether or not I have it.
And I think that kind of feeds my delusion
is essentially what it is
that maybe I don't have schizoaffective disorder.
So this is something that clearly I've struggled with a lot
in terms of leading to relapses.
And so, one psychiatrist actually that I had
in the hospital one time suggested
that I take a picture of myself in the emergency room
when I'm brought in by police,
or by an ambulance, or whatnot.
Like a visual evidence of the state that I was in.
So that, when I'm questioning it later on,
I can look back at that picture and be like,
"Oh, yeah, no, I didn't make that up."
And it just kind of helps to provide a glimpse back into
what you were experiencing in that period.
If you have any other tips
for how to kind of bring yourself back to understanding
that you do have the illness,
we would love to hear about them in the comments below.
I hope this video kind of helps you
to feel less alone in this feeling,
or feel like less of imposter
in terms of having the illness,
because I think that it's a very common experience
to have with schizophrenia.
All right, so thank you so much for watching this video.
If you'd like to see more from us, make sure to subscribe.
And if you wanna help support the creation of these videos,
make sure to check out the link to our Patreon page.
Thanks again for watching.
And as always, wishing you and your loved ones good health.
We'll see you in the next video. Bye.