simple-petalSenior Contributor
Why am I here
I have been thinking about my goals and values on my path to recovery and this website and CHIME and what I wanted to achieve by joining sane forums and recovery club and posting and what I need from the community here and how to ask for help.
I guess tonight it is also because I can’t sleep again and can’t switch off my thinking to go back to sleep. It is also because of connection and rejoining society after hiding out in my home and my bed regularly since 2022 on depressed days as a coping strategy. It is also about processing what happened and what I learned about my time in psychosis, mania, depression and self care and perhaps sharing my story. It is about identity and what to do when you lose it. When I stopped work due to mental illness I lost a lot. I lost my identity. I lost the sense of self worth my job gave me. I lost an income. I lost a sense of having a place in society. I could not imagine a future. It is also about shame and guilt about my actions when I was delusional and psychotic and processing my experience of psychosis and moving on with life and making sense of what happened during the psychosis and integrating it as a story. It is about not asking for help and not knowing what I needed when I was unwell. It is about not recognising the symptoms of psychosis in myself and my family not recognising it or how unwell I was or being able to help. It is about taking responsibility for my actions and my life. It is about empowerment. It is about stigma. It isn’t about hope tonight. I got hope back a year ago and started to contemplate my future and what life might look like in the future and how it needs to be different. It is about community. I can’t remember what M stands for. It is about feeling let down by the medical system and inequality in healthcare. Now I’m just rambling.