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Reaching out..

hazelhawkCasual Contributor07 Aug 2015, 9:08 pm AEST

Reaching out..

Hi everyone,
I'm brand new to this forum (only found it tonight) so I'm a bit nervous about my first post.
I want to reach out and share my story to see if anyone else has had a similar experience.
When I was 19 I had a brief episode of psychosis and was hospitalised for two weeks. I had been quite a party girl as a teenager, smoked a lot of marijuana, and had tried meth once and contributed my psychosis to this. After my hospitalisation, I worked really hard to change my lifestyle, I was compliant with my medication and the doctors were all very impressed with my recovery. They said if I stayed on the medication for five years, I had a 95% chance that I wouldn't ever have another episode of psychosis.
After four and a half years, I was in a really good place. I had completed a degree, was in a stable and loving relationship, working full-time and hadn't had any problems with my mental health. I no longer had a psychiatrist, and my GP thought it would be okay for me to stop the medication.
I was fine for twelve months, and then a year almost to the day of me stopping the medication, I again lost control of my thoughts. It started with insomnia and extreme anxiety, and then racing thoughts, beleifs that I was powerful, irrational beleifs and delusions. This time I was taken in an ambulance to the hospital after yelling at my neighbour and punching my poor loving husband in the face. I was again detained. The weeks after I returned home, my mania continued and then in the months after I had a bout of severe depression.
Through the support of my family, medication and again a diligent attitude towards healthy lifestyle choices, after a year and a half I have again been able to reach a place of 'recovery'. What I am still struggling with is that I have never been diagnosed with an illness. My psychiatrist who now says I only need to see him every six months says he is treating me for bipolar/schizoaffective disorder and I am on a combination of antipsychotics, antidepressants and mood stabilisers. Again I have managed to impress my doctors with my recovery and my GP says she has never seen anyone get so sick so quickly and then get better so quickly. She attributes it to me following all the advice that I have been given. My GP said she has read something interesting about cases like me where we don't fit with a certain diagnosis but may just have a tendency to have episodes of psychosis.
I have joined this forum in a hope to find people who may have had a similar experience with psychosis, and perhaps have never been formally diagnosed with a certain illness.
Also, I would like to share my experience as I truly believe recovery is possible even from the scariest corners of mental illness. I know others have suffered greater and for longer than I have, but I too have felt what its like to lose something that most people take for granted: your mind. And I know what has worked for me, so if it helps others to hear that, I am more than willing to share tips and advice.
Lastly, I still have bad days, and this seems like a supportive community that may help me through some of the darker moments.
Well, this is my first post and I would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading 🙂

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In response to: Reaching out..

Bc2astContributor10 Sept 2015, 10:57 pm AEST

Re: Reaching out..

When there may be signs of Symptoms.

It's simple but not easy.

ensure sleep.

remain connected. Not become isolated.

Distract myself from certain tracks of thoughts.

I don't indulge in much self reflection. I don't trust my thoughts when heading into certain patterns. If thinking becomes one tracked and based on a certain narrative, I do something else. An activity that keeps me in the moment. Not TV. Anything active. Playing an instrument, gardening, art, going out with friends(sometimes I had to force myself, rarely regretted).

eat well.

exercise!

For me I did Some meditation or tai chi. Not too much! Can be a trigger. A big one for me but balanced is real good. Not get involved with the esoteric aspects, that type of thinking could spiral into a trigger. Think of it very pragmatically. Now I do harder (more physical) Martial type practice mostly.

Exercise again.

Do something new with new people. People who are well balanced.

It took years to train my thoughts. Over ten years and still I had two more episodes. But the recovery is quicker each time, though the psychosis is just as acute. And I trust when I can take myself off the meds too( though I don't endorse this for others). I do keep a stash at the start and I would catch myself and know when to take it. This may last 3 months since the months of doctor prescribed dosages. Only a couple here and there, mainly for thoughts or when sleeping was an issue, due to thoughts.

I once asked the CAT team how they can tell I was really psychotic. Friends and colleagues were pretty good at making out I was faking or "weak minded"," that I just need to harden up", or they felt at times they were a bit psychotic just like me. So I asked. They said they knew because if they, or anyone else was on the medication doses they had me on they would sleep for a week! The fact I could stay awake (and didn't really sleep much at all in the early medicated stages) means the medication had a lot to work on. Weeks past, I start sleeping scarily heavy, and long, even as they reduce the dose. So the explanation they gave seemed to be confirmed.

Thats a start I think.

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