Month: January 2015

Psychotic Gems

It’s hard to describe how I “got over” or “recovered from” my two breaks, because those words don’t do justice to what’s involved with completely losing one’s mind. It’s a process, though, that’s for sure.

One piece is to learn not to ignore the breaks themselves and not to obsess about them. Ignoring them without processing them or testing them against everyday life and reality will make them grow worse. Obsessing, on the other hand, will keep me from moving on and being able to separate my breaks from my everyday life.

Another piece is that I don’t want to discount everything I experienced as just something of the mind. Conversely,  I don’t want to hold everything I saw as absolutely true in real life. Approaching either extreme will cause great anguish and confusion.

In all things, have realistic expectations.

During my first break, I had crazy beliefs about the people around me. When I tested these beliefs against reality and everyday life, they did not hold up and my delusions began to break down.

Also, It’s hard to talk to people you have half-delusions about after coming back from a psychotic break. Talking with people I knew I could trust was very helpful in clearing up some of my delusions about people.

Some pieces of my breaks took a few years to unravel. An obsession over a certain girl was one of them. That took a 2nd psychotic break to undo the delusions there that happened, 5 years after my first one.

What of the other pieces? I look up into the sky and see a most beautiful spectacle. There are missing pieces which hide the most vital parts that bring everything together. I hold several of the pieces in my hand.

I then live every day outwardly as though I am ignorant. Inwardly, I spend some time in my private life figuring out how these pieces fit, both alone and with close friends.

The pieces I still hold in my hand are the cream of my own little world. The challenge to fill in the gaps will never end till after I die. While my psychotic breaks were fundamentally the harshest things I’ve had to deal with, they are also my greatest gems.

Live Like They Never Happened

I suppose it may be better for me to just move on and forget about my past two psychotic breaks. However, as I learn more and experience more things in life, I’m realizing they play a big part in how my worldview is shaping up. Although it may be true I’ll never understand them till I die, I understand more about them as time goes on. What does not settle well is that it depends on whether the world as we know it ends first or my death happens first. Part of my psychotic breaks dealt with the end of the age and the commencement of the new.

I don’t expect anyone to understand. I continue living life as though nothing happened. I try to be generous, kind, loving, wise, and understanding. In my alone time, I spend some of it pondering all the big questions. I’ve been one to do that most of my life.

I think it’s a happy medium to spend some alone time thinking about my worldview and my breaks how they fit in. If I leave the psychotic breaks alone, then they have begun to drive me up the wall in the past. I have not reconciled the content of my breaks with how I understand reality yet. I still hope to write a book on them, what they were from my point of view and my inpatient notes’ point of view. They are drastically different.

Drastically.

Depression, Employment, Recovery

I went through some bouts of bad depression late last summer and into the fall. There were times I had to convince myself to stay alive. I never felt like I was losing control over my will to do so but it was incredibly painful nonetheless. What ultimately brought me out of the depression was work.

I first started helping my grandparents with things that needed to get done before their move into a retirement home. In October,  I started working for two companies part time. These two jobs have helped pull me out of the depression completely.

Work gives me a schedule, a sense of accomplishment, new friends, accountability, and money to sustain myself. It took me almost a year to find work. My heart goes out to those who are looking for employment. It’s very rough not having a job, in many more ways than just money.

Now, I am doing very well. Yesterday, my therapist said she had no concerns. I hope to start writing more here as I do in my journals as well. Thank you for coming back and visiting!! 🙂