What it's like Living with Schizophrenia/Schizoaffective Disorder

hi my name is Lauren and I'm doing a series of videos on what it's like to live with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or mental illness in general and this video is going to be a little bit more about what it's like living with schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia on a daily basis so I am currently taking medication for my symptoms but it's important to know that even while on medication I do still experience symptoms they're not as bad as when I'm not taking medications but they are still there so some of these are some of these symptoms that I experienced our hallucinations so I I do sir still hear voices even while I'm on medications there generally though a little bit more like idle chatter so just really random conversations either commentary on what I'm doing at the moment or what other people are doing or just completely irrelevant chatter like talking about different foods or the weather or just irrelevant things like that when I'm not taking medications the loose Nations are or tend to be a little bit more dark and personalized to me so I get a lot of negative comments about myself and when it's really bad it turns to command hallucinations so telling me to do things and when it has that dark twist as well it can be telling me to do things like self-harm or when it's really bad taking my own life so I've been had command hallucinations to jump off the high level bridge or to drive my car into a tree or things like that so very important to be on the medication to mitigate some of these command hallucinations so it's much more manageable when I'm on medications but there are still breakthrough symptoms so that's important to know so the audio hallucinations for me are very real so everyone has this internal dialogue that they have with himself in their own self-talk that they have but the voices that I hear are different and that they are coming from an external source than me so sometimes the voices sound like they're coming from my own head but their identify or identify them as someone else's voice or someone else's thoughts and sometimes they sound like they're coming from like behind my shoulder or from outside of my head essentially so these are the two kinds of ways that I hear voices but it's important to distinguish that they are different from your own internal self talk that you here they are tangible voices that I hear that are different from my own so as a bit of a coping mechanism to deal with these external voices I have become familiar with them and I've actually even named one so one that comes up rather often I've named Jennifer and so it just kind of helps me to separate it from my own thoughts and to realize that it is just a hallucination it's just Jennifer talking again and it's not my own thoughts and I don't need to confound those two or my own thoughts with the voices that I'm hearing because it can be very difficult to separate the two sometimes I sometimes get visual hallucinations so not very often when I'm on medications an example of this would be hallucinating like bugs or I pollinated spiders before or just little stuff like that but it's not really that bad and I don't get it that much while I'm on medications another one that I sometimes get even when I'm taking medications is paranoia so sometimes I'll do things like I'll check mirrors to see if there's a camera in them I have this this I guess it's a bit of a delusion that if I hold my fingernail to a mirror if it if there's a space between the reflection and my finger then it's all good but if there's no space or if it's distorted a little bit then there's a camera in there so that's a little bit of a maladaptive coping mechanism that I used to deal with this paranoia but it can be helpful and it's just something that I have to deal with I also have a little bit paranoid sometimes of people following me or of people particularly like police being out to get me or out to take me into the hospital or something like that so the paranoia comes out every now and then even while I'm on medications so the symptoms that I've been talking about already are primarily like hallucinations delusions paranoia which are all positive symptoms of schizophrenia but it's also challenging to deal with some of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia so as well as with schizoaffective disorder there is the mood disorder aspect to it as well so it can be difficult to manage hypomanic symptoms sometimes and it can be even more difficult to manage the depressive symptoms sometimes so I kind of get a bit of a double whammy with it where the negative symptoms of schizophrenia can look like depression and I also have the bipolar side of schizoaffective disorder depressive symptoms as well so that can be a lot to handle and to manage another negative symptom of schizophrenia is blunted effect which is a really hard one for me to bear which I talked a little bit about in the video about my story some more symptoms are a little bit of disorganized thought sometimes so my thoughts can get a little bit jumbled and I can be a little bit all over the place sometimes also racing thoughts happen quite frequently so I've kind of learned some self soothing mechanisms or coping strategies to kind of deal with this and to mitigate the racing thoughts something else that can be kind of difficult to handle is during episodes that I have so psychotic episodes depressive episodes episodes related to the illness self-care can be a little bit more difficult to properly take care of them to properly initiate so it can be difficult to even just get out of bed in the morning sometimes and then beyond that showering can be quite the feat sometimes brushing my teeth getting ready eating all of those can be a little bit more difficult during those episodes so being on medication helps with all these symptoms that I've just been talking about but it is important to note that the illness is a little bit cyclical in terms of episodes that come about so it's important to kind of try to find that balance with medications and so sometimes you're gonna have to tweak it a little bit in order to manage these absent flows in the illness and so even I mean lately I've had to adjust my medications to try to manage the symptoms that were increasing and then again once the episode starts to wane again to look at adjusting medications again to account for that so balance is really crucial in terms of medication as well as finding other coping strategies to deal with some of these symptoms so thanks so much for watching this was a bit of an overview about what it's like for me on a day-to-day basis living wiscons affective disorder or schizophrenia so I'm gonna be continuing to make more videos about the different aspects of stillness and so if you want to learn more make sure to subscribe and thanks so much again for watching and have a great day

Channel: Living Well with Schizophrenia

Views: 651,413

Keywords: schizophrenia, schizoaffective, schizoaffective disorder, mental health, mental illness, difficulties with schizophrenia, challenges with schizophrenia, coping strategies for schizophrenia, coping mechanisms for schizophrenia, living with schizophrenia, living with schizoaffective, living with schizoaffective disorder, daily life with schizophrenia, antipsychotic medication, psychotic, psychosis, delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, negative symptoms, positive symptoms

Id: A-H7iJMo4fc

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 11 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/flgatorguy87]

This is phenomenal. Psych RN here. She has a great mix of insight as well as fairly significant symptoms. I love how she specifies the origin of the voice which is a common misconception. It is real in her brain. I'll use this for education with our social workers

[u/doghaircut]

I wonder if hallucinations like these are what caused people to think they see (or hear) ghosts/demons. If you're not diagnosed (or lived hundreds of years ago), ghosts would make a better explanation than "mental illness."

[u/Notcommentmuch]

My brother was diagnosed as schizophrenic many years ago. He told me a joke that he heard in some group session Roses are red, Violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic , And so am I. .

He thought it was hysterical. I was glad the he could laugh at life once in a while

[u/leadingzer0]

This kind of detailed, personal account of the disorder is very helpful. I was never quite clear on what the experience of schizophrenia was, relevant to the fear of being affected. I hallucinate chatter of other voices as I'm drifting off to sleep on rare occasions, so I was curious. But this is clearly much more disruptive.

Thanks.

[u/Dnt_Shave_4_Sherlock]

It was very interesting to hear this from the point of view of someone that experiences it and at the same time seems very in control. I have a few family members that are schizophrenic so I've always been concerned it may become an issue at some point in my life. It was alittle unsettling watching her get visibly uncomfortable as she went over certain details of her symptoms I can't imagine the stress of living with that daily even with medication.

[u/catomelette]

I’m impressed by how clearly and almost clinically she’s explaining how she is affected. She is so strong and healthy to be able to do this while going through something as terrifying as not being in control of your own mind. I hope future generations will feel less stigmatized by mental illness so people can be more open like her and we can work on everyone having the best lives they possibly can regardless.

[u/siteburn]

Lost my brother in-law about 3 years ago to suicide. He was dealing with this heavily. I appreciate the inside description of what it is like. My heart goes out to anyone that is dealing with this disease. It is such an overwhelming hard thing to watch let alone manage yourself.

[u/Bleezy79]

wow. very interesting. thank you for sharing.

[u/MortFlesh]

Very articulate and educational overview of the disorder. Played Senua Hellblade last year which offered a great window into what these people have to deal with even if its setting was more fantastical.