- My name is Lauren and I live with schizoaffective disorder. Schizoaffective disorder is a
combination of schizophrenia and a major mood disorder. For me, it's bipolar. I was diagnosed in 2016 at the age of 25, but struggled with symptoms
since my late teens. This is my story. A lot of people ask about my childhood, expecting it to be troubled in some way, but it really wasn't, for the most part. I lived with my mom, dad and
brother, and I had friends. I was definitely a
little quieter than most and got lost in my own head
a lot, but I was happy. I loved school, and I was very
active in extracurriculars, such as competitive gymnastics, soccer and various volunteer work. Then in high school, my
state of mind began to shift. I was no longer this happy young person. I was more withdrawn,
lost interest in school and just kind of generally felt adrift. After high school, I wasn't
sure what I wanted to do, so kind of just limped
into post-secondary. I was very bothered by the world, though, and my role or kind of lack thereof in it. I began to feel extreme
sadness and despondency. I explained some of these
sentiments to my family doctor and was prescribed antidepressants. I took them for a while, but
gave up on them shortly after, as it didn't feel they were
having much of an impact. My boyfriend had moved
away after high school to pursue university in another province. So my decision to eventually transfer to a school in the same province was perhaps informed by this, but also I felt a spark of excitement at the prospect of pursuing
a degree in social work, and this school seemed to be the best fit. I enjoyed university, but was still feeling
a sense of disconnect. I was quite rubbish in social situations during this period, too. I had lost friends and I
felt like the few I did have didn't really know me all that well. The times I did socialize, usually with my boyfriend's friends, I was quite awkward and silent, and it was hard to form
social connections. I graduated with my bachelor of arts in social development studies while kind of bouncing back and forth between provinces a couple of times. In 2013, I made the move
back to university again to start what should have
been a quick year-long bachelor of social work. This year ended up turning into three. My first semester in the new program, my head space became so
depressed and confused that I realized I needed
additional support. I sought out counseling
through the university. I had really no idea how
to engage in therapy, and so my awkwardness and
silent disposition bled through into these interactions as well. My counselor decided I
needed further support, and so then connected me
with a GP and a psychiatrist through the university as well. It's hard for me to put
into words how grateful I am that I had these individuals all trying to help and support me. However, despite this support, my headspace deteriorated to the point where I felt that the only option I had was to take my own life. I made an attempt on my
life in January, 2014 at the age of 23. Now, it's not the right wording to use to say that I wasn't successful, but regardless, I wasn't
successful in taking my own life. I ended up hospitalized
for the first time. When I got out of the hospital, I was just filled with
despair at the realization that not only was I unsuccessful, but being hospitalized hadn't
really helped at all, either. The next year was a huge struggle trying to keep up with schoolwork while seeing my care
team pretty well daily. I kept sliding further
and further into despair. One year after my first attempt, I decided it was my best option
to try to end my life again. Obviously I was unsuccessful, but I came much closer to this time. I hadn't said a word about
my plans to my counselor, but for some reason he had a
feeling that something was off. He decided to send the police
to do a wellness check on me. They found me just in time
to rush me to the hospital, where I ended up on life
support for several days. Waking up in the hospital this
time was absolutely crushing. All the same feelings as the
last time came rushing back, but also this time I was
filled with embarrassment, too, that I had now been unsuccessful
in taking my life twice. I felt like I couldn't escape this cycle. I was desperate for anything
that would alleviate some of the distress that I was feeling, so I decided to follow the
advice of my psychiatrist and give ECT, which is electric
convulsive therapy, a try. ECT is a procedure where
they put you to sleep and shock your brain to induce a seizure. No one really knows how it works, but some claim that it
has therapeutic value for treating some mental illnesses. It did not improve my condition, though, and left me with memory deficits. Again, more despair flooded in as yet another attempt at treatment and getting better made no impact. Throughout the next year, I continued to try various types of medication with really minimal positive effects and plenty of negative side effects. During this time, I also began
to experience new symptoms, which I later identified
as hallucinations. It started with olfactory hallucinations, where I would smell these
really terrible smells that I couldn't identify and I couldn't locate the source of. I ended up convinced that I just reeked. I also began to hear voices. They started out with me
hearing my name spoken out loud. I brushed this off and the
subsequent chatter that followed, thinking I could just hear
conversations around me. However, it began happening even when I was completely alone. These new symptoms confused
me and frightened me, so I never let my care team
know about them at the time. I could feel myself deteriorating
mentally even further, and in March, 2016, at 25, I
had my first manic episode. I became just fixated on the idea that my care team was
hiding something from me and secretly trying to harm me. I fought the medical clinic to gain access to my medical files and just
obsessively poured over them, believing I was finding
secret clues and connections that would me closer to
figuring out what was going on. My boyfriend was starting to wonder if something more serious was going on. And after finding me sleeping in my car outside of the medical clinic one night decided to try to get me to
go to the hospital with him. He was really actually great at focusing on validating the feelings
that I was experiencing and being empathic about that rather than focusing on
negating the delusional thoughts that I was having. I think this was a really big
part of what made me trust him in taking me to the hospital. I spent another couple
of weeks in the hospital and eventually stabilized somewhat. And this time was slapped
with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder
with psychotic features. I know upon reflection,
this made a bit of sense, as I had definitely
experienced deep depression. And I realized that I had also
experienced hypomania, too. I had these kind of pockets
of periods during my early 20s where I would go off on adventures, traveling or running in the mountains, pushing myself physically and feeling, I suppose you could
call it a zest for life. On the school front, I was
just finishing up my coursework and was also wrapping up my practicum working as a research assistant
for one of my professors. I absolutely loved the
work that I was doing. I was helping with exciting
mental health research projects and was even working on
my own research paper that would eventually get published. I graduated that spring of
2016 and landed a dream job doing cancer care research in Toronto. I was thrilled about this and feeling like maybe I was
beginning to see a light. So, you know, on paper, it seemed like I was doing really well. I had just graduated from
my second degree program, landed a great job in a
city I wanted to live in. I have a loving long-term boyfriend and some close friendships. However, this seeming period of stability lasted less than three months, and that summer my world
came crashing down. I was struggling mentally so much that I had to resign from my
new job and move back home. I was devastated. This move back home also coincided with the ending of my relationship. It was very amicable,
but still another blow. I moved back in with my mom and sunk even further into my own head. I saw a psychiatrist a few times and decided to be more honest
about all of the symptoms that I was experiencing, and that I was experiencing
what I now know were psychotic symptoms
on a regular basis. He diagnosed me with
schizoaffective disorder. On some level, this diagnosis
felt good to receive, as it felt like a relief
that what I was experiencing could finally be attributed to something. However, I was also left
feeling lost and scared, as there really are not
a lot of success stories being shared about people living with schizophrenia
spectrum illnesses. Almost everything we
hear about in the news or in popular media are very negative stigmatized depictions of schizophrenia. This sense of loss was kind
of compounded with the fact that I was still getting worse. My psychotic symptoms
continue to worsen that fall, and I ended up in the hospital for just over a month this time. This hospitalization was a
truly horrific experience. First of all, I was brought
to the hospital in handcuffs from my psychiatrist's office. I became terrified being locked in a sterile white concrete brick room and began to kind of lose my cool. I was subsequently
accosted by hospital staff and tied down by my hands, feet
and chest to a metal gurney while they injected me with
antipsychotic medication and something to sedate me. This hospital stay only got worse, and one time while admitted in
the psychiatric institution, I was dragged into an isolation room and pinned down by six men,
both nursing staff and security, stripped naked and injected
with medications again. They left me naked in this room that alarmingly had a window in the door, where other patients
and staff could walk by and see me naked. I yelled and pounded on the door for them to give me my clothes back. They eventually gave me a blanket, but realizing that I was now that crazy psych ward patient lashing out was a lot to take in. This hospital stay left me traumatized and with a rather deep
distrust of the medical system. I was finally being treated,
though, for the right thing and began to see some slight improvements. The next couple of years saw me kind of float in and out of
jobs due to my mental health. But more importantly, I was
slowly rebuilding my life in the sense of trying to
strengthen relationships, and most especially my
relationship with myself. I put in a lot of work trying
to build up self-acceptance and self-compassion and love. I dabbled with dating, but was left feeling less than optimistic because you know, online dating
in this day and age sucks. But also I was pretty terrified of being open with potential partners about my struggles and
experiences and diagnosis. And then I met Rob. We seemed to connect with each other on a level that I hadn't
experienced in quite awhile. Of course I worried about
telling him about my diagnosis and mental health history, but I felt safe doing so with him. I think I told him on our third date, and he really couldn't
have taken it better. He was empathic and really
just wanted to learn more. He asked me questions, and he
actually hit up the library to find additional resources about what living with the illness meant. We fell in love with
each other quite quickly, and I really enjoyed getting to know him. I moved in with him and his two kids, and we ended up getting
engaged the summer of 2019 when I was 27. It felt like things were
going really quite amazingly. I began to question whether or not I really needed medication, so I began to be less
structured in taking them. This led me to follow kind
of more delusional thoughts about the medications being poisonous, which eventually led me to
completely stop taking them. I don't think it's hard to imagine that this didn't end very well. I became extremely
delusional and very paranoid. I ended up in the hospital
for two weeks this time. My delusional thoughts had
spiraled into full-on psychosis, and Rob, not knowing how to manage things, called the police to
take me to the hospital. Given my traumatic history with hospitals, it wasn't terribly helpful, but it did help to stabilize
me back on medications. This psychotic episode and hospitalization felt different, though, because suddenly there
was a lot more at stake than just upending my own life. I was now a mom to two
incredible young children and felt incredible guilt for
letting them down in this way. There was a lot to wade through in terms of understanding
what had happened with their two other parents as well. They brought up concerns around
their ability to trust me as a result of me hiding from everyone that I had stopped taking my medications. This was incredibly hard to take in, but I think also kind of helped me to understand my responsibility to do absolutely everything I can to stay as well as possible, if not for myself than for my family, and namely the two kids I now
shared responsibility for. Now, I think it's important to clarify that wellness is not exactly
a choice with this illness. However, there are factors
that can promote wellness that I tried to adhere to. I focused on building in
more routine into my life, which was something upended with the dawn of a global pandemic. But, you know, I tried
to focus on eating well and exercising regularly,
nurturing my relationships, and just trying to take care
of myself as best as possible. It's probably important to note that during this more tumultuous period, I also needed to take an
extended leave from school. I had gone back to university
to work toward my masters of science and health policy research. However, due to various factors, primarily the stresses
of this return to school on my mental health, I had to withdraw. Rob and I got married in August, 2020, and a few days later found
out that I was pregnant, too. For quite a while, I had felt
that I shouldn't have kids, largely due to my illness. I felt that not only could I potentially
pass it on to my child, but that I wouldn't have the
capacity to take care of them and be as present as I wanted to be. Some of these fears were
kind of dissuaded though, you know, growing into a parental
role with Rob's two kids, who were now my kids as well. I discovered new depths
of what love can be, and absolutely cherished helping them grow and working at guiding them through life. Parenting is incredibly hard, and is made harder by my
illness at times, too, but I knew that I could do it. And so finding out I was going
to have a child of my own was a little scary, but mostly incredibly exciting. Pregnancy was a very
difficult experience for me. It definitely impacted my mental health, and I suppose this may
have been compounded by being more isolated due
to the pandemic as well. I had initially wanted to reduce and ideally go off of my
psychiatric medications entirely when I found out that I was pregnant, but very quickly realized that this wasn't going to be possible. I discussed with my psychiatrist how to reduce the
potential risks to the baby due to the medications I
was on as much as possible, and we found a medication
regimen that worked for me and that I felt relatively
safe on while carrying a child. I gave birth to my beautiful
sweet baby boy Theodore on April 12th, 2021. We have spent the last seven months getting to know him as a family and all falling rather smitten with him. Navigating life with two
older kids, a newborn and keeping up with life and work has presented its challenges
for my mental health. However, since Theodore was born, I have felt probably the most
stable I think I ever have. I've read that becoming a mother
can be a protective factor for those living with schizophrenia, and I am absolutely experiencing that. Rob and I started this YouTube channel back in December of 2018, but we have really
committed to working on it and growing it over the last year or so. I think that exploring my diagnosis and my experiences of
living with it in this way and sharing about it publicly has been extremely instrumental in working toward a place
of more self-acceptance. I feel more at peace now with the fact that I live with schizoaffective disorder, and I feel I have a better grip on it and a better understanding
of how to manage it now. I don't doubt that I
will experience setbacks and more difficult periods down the line as a result of my illness. And I definitely am not symptom-free on a day-to-day basis, either. I still experience breakthrough symptoms such as hallucinations,
delusions and paranoia. However, I feel a lot more grounded in managing these aspects than I used to. And for the most part, my
medication and self-care regimens really help to keep them at bay, too. I'm glad my story isn't over. There have been so many
times throughout my life where I never thought I would say that, but I am grateful to be alive today and to be able to keep growing
and engaging with the people and the world around me. I'm grateful I get to
keep exploring myself and discovering who I am,
schizoaffective and all. Now, you know, I hate the
sugarcoated mental health stories that end with a lovely little bow on top, but I really do want to
convey that it is possible to lead a meaningful and fulfilling life, even with a mental illness. There will be ups and downs,
as there has been for me, but life can still be
full and even beautiful. So thank you so much
for watching this video. If you would like to hear
more about my experiences with schizophrenia or
schizoaffective disorder, make sure to check out the
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without you, thank you. All right, so thank you so
much again for watching, and as always wishing you and
your loved ones good health. I'll see you in the next video, bye.
