Welcome! Introduce yourself here 🙂

Hi, I’m Jade30. I have Schizoaffective disorder and this is my 21st year fighting it. The past year, I’ve spent a lot of time resting to keep healing from 2 particularly nasty episodes over the past 2 years. I’m coming to peace with more limited capacity, though it’s hard. I’m excited about my sister being pregnant-I’m going to have a new niece next year, saving up all my energy for cuddles with her!! Oh and also, I love baking every so often and making healthy treats 🙂

Welcome @Jade30 😊

Hello and welcome @Jade30 the forums👋! I hope you find the forums a great place to be, full of advice, support and friendship! I’m a Community Guide here who has a lived experience of schizophrenia as one of my conditions so I can understand to a certain point as to what it must be like with schizoaffective disorder. The best advice I can give you is keep on living your best life and don’t give up!

Take care!

Judi9877☺️💐

Thanks @Judi9877 that’s really kind! Great advice, living my best life and never giving up. One thing I’ve promised myself over the years is that I’ll never give up on myself, I’m here for the long run 🙂

Hi, I'm 65 and in the last couple of years since I finished work (under unpleasant circumstances that resulted in a Workcover claim) I've struggled mental health wise more and more. I've been using maladaptive strategies to get through life (bulimia in my 20's and a lot of alcohol in 20s-late 50's) and identify with many BP characteristics, esp. very low/ no sense of self worth, great difficulty regulating emotions, understanding boundaries or setting them for myself. Also some ASD characteristics.

Wondered if anyone has found schema therapy helpful and can suggest some practitioners in Melbourne?

Welcome to the forums @sixtyfive !

Great to have you connect with us. I'm sure there are many who are able to share their experiences with you.

I wanted to quickly clarify. When you mentioned BP characteristics, did you mean bipolar? borderline personality disorder?

I meant borderline characteristics

Hi @sixtyfive

Welcome to the forums! I'm one of the peer moderators here at SANE. I can definitely relate to using maladaptive strategies to get through some rough periods in my life. My main issue is anxiety and fortunately I've come to use healthier strategies. I hope you can get some answers. I'm not in Melbourne so can't help with specific services down there.

Looking forward to seeing you around here.

Hanami

Hi @sixtyfive ,

Ahhhh, thank you for clarifying.

If you look at The Australian BPD Foundation, you'll be able to look at their newsletter which contains BPD supports in each state.

In Melb, they have a personality disorder clinic called Spectrum. But I've heard it is very hard to access.

and unfortunately the cut-off point for support is 64. I'm someone who's been physically pretty active, trying to keep my mental health level, so I really don't fit into the standard 'aged' person category. 😞