Might be insensitive to some but I am done with this shit. Diagnosed schizophrenics who kill people take by far the bulk of the publicity and do 99% of the damage.

It's hard enough dealing with your own symptoms, might be privileged to say but that's the easy part. Controlling how everyone else deals with schizophrenia is impossible. I'd say you're naive if you think it doesn't affect you, or you live under a rock. Being seen as dangerous, or dumb, or both, it's incompatible with EVERYTHING. It limits what you can do. It's why we hide it. What parent would be comfortable having dangerous drug addled schizophrenics near their kids.

No one outside your home cares how much progress you made and how much you struggled. You can't quantify it and you don't score any points for that. Unpopular opinion but apart from surface level sympathy the whole trope of getting high off meth and going psychotic and killing your family member is so far outside my lived experience I don't understand any of it. The people in these articles might as well have contracted rabies which caused extreme madness, that's how foreign it feels. But no of course it has to be schizophrenia.

Just a small rant. Let me know if any of it made sense or if you have comments.

She gets me through all my hard times and doesn't judge me for psychosis. The best friend a woman can have!

Was playing around and did this ..I think it looks pretty cool

Crazy update. I’m 33, my partner is 49 and he just had a stroke from untreated diabetes and he has a family history. He lost movement in half his body, and had slurred speech. He is the sweetest man in the world, and in the hospital through sweet tears he gave me an out and said that he knows I need to take care of myself and he understood if this is too much for me. I immediately knew I want to stay. He has felt like my path back to reality and positivity for a long time, he grounds me and loves me unconditionally despite my own blunted emotional state. After I told him I want to stay with him, he asked me to marry him. I haven’t felt something that felt so right for me in years, this was like this door of sudden clarity.
I had previously been staying in bed at my parents house all day long, bored and numb, watching tv and reading books to pass the time. I’m on disability as I have zero energy or motivation to work. But I’m on meds and stable. I would go to board game nights at our local game store 3 days a week to get social interaction, that’s where I met him. So we would see eachother 3 days a week and I would go over on the weekends to see him.
I visited him every day in the hospital for about a month, I was surprised at my motivation to go see him and my ability to do those little things like getting a visitors badge, talking to the nurses, pushing his wheelchair to the dining hall. Now after about a month, he is home and I am moved into his house with him. My mom cleaned the house for us and I ordered new curtains and found a beautiful couch on Facebook for us. It was fun and felt creative to be decorating a space for us to feel cozy and at home in. Planning our partnership.
He’s been home for about a week now, and I feel fulfilled. Exhausted, but spiritually fulfilled. I help him shower and get dressed, cook 3 healthy meals for us, and take him to outpatient therapy. His needs and schedule push me to do things I wasn’t doing before, like take a shower and get up out of bed, get out of the house, eat healthy meals regularly. I’m also starting to connect more to “common reality” less in my own world and more connected to what other people are up to.
Right now we are figuring out what our life looks like together, and I am learning even better how to take care of my own needs. We had a conversation where I told him I need to spend a lot of time alone and resting and having my own life that’s separate from his because I too am on a path of healing. He was so understanding and truly wants the best for me. So now I help him to wherever he needs to go, and we do our own things. I have enough time to rest but I also am doing so much caretaking that I’m not bored anymore, it’s like I have purpose beyond myself. And he is so positive in the way that he thinks, it’s starting to rub off on me.
Seeing him heal, and his attitude going through his own health crisis has been so inspiring to me, and motivates me to be positive in my own healing. I am nowhere near perfect, but I am learning to accept where I am at and I can’t believe all of the progress I have been making in such a short time. Love, even when you can’t fully feel it, is a powerful catalyst for change!

Also I absolutely can’t believe how much they do for physical healing, and how little they do for mental health. He was in a beautiful rehab, got educated on strokes, set up with multiple types of doctors and therapists. I was put in the hospital for a month in a room full of other people and given crayons that they took away so we didn’t write on the walls, they gave me medications and were about to discharge me to a homeless shelter until my parents finally reached out and flew out to get me.

Really grateful for my medications too. I would not be able to do this without them.

I hope my story can inspire you! I know that a lot of people are worried about relationships with schizophrenia. Mine isn’t perfect but it has been so fulfilling and I wanted to share.

I lost a lot of my art skills over the many years Iv had schizophrenia ..but recently started sculpting after getting a gut feeling that I could be good at it possibly 🤷‍♀️ so I tried…and it’s really cool and exciting to look at my progress so far …I wonder where I’ll be six months and beyond Thanks

Thanks for looking

Pictures start with my latest two and end with my first two

Hey you all guys what's up I just joined this place. I'm a 37yo guy and I was diagnosed with schizoeffective when I was 17, it's been a long and bumpy ride since. But I thought it was great there's a place for people with our disorder to come together and share with each other. I'm a very sociable person and it sucks I can't find ne1 to talk to in the real world because it's so hard to talk even though I love talking with people. I had all kinds of friends,girlfriends, and I worked 2 jobs that I was really good at 1 at a roofing company and 1 at a restraunt after my roofing job and this hit and I lost all that stuff it totally sucked. Major. Ne who thought I'd make my first thread. Hey yall

Hey guys, I'm 40M I've had schizoaffective disorder since I was 20, mostly the depressive side, just wanted to say thank you for creating this community.

Not sure if this is appropriate here, but I thought this community might find this story interesting.

August Natterer was a German electrician diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1907 after a psychotic episode where he saw 10,000 images in 30 minutes. He spent the next 26 years in psychiatric institutions drawing everything he had seen — trying to make sense of his own mind.

His drawings were later recognized as some of the most significant works of outsider art in history, influencing Dalí, Max Ernst and the Surrealist movement.

Made a video essay about him in Spanish with English subtitles: https://youtu.be/dxyHLwjI0fs

The video also discusses where the line is between romanticizing mental illness and recognizing its expressive value — would love to hear thoughts from people with lived experience.

This one is pretty little compared to my recent few heads, which made it a little more challenging

I like it 👍 what do you think ? I can’t tell if it’s an improvement from the pink one that showed progress or not …the eyes could be better they bother me a bit, but I did the lips a different way than usual and I like how they turned out

Hi guys.

I feel.. not hopeless but something similar. I weigh the most I ever have in my life and I'm really struggling with self-image. I can't look in the mirror. I hate photos of myself. I'm wearing hoodies all the time and it's summer. I used to really love how I looked, like, REALLY love how I looked. I stopped the medication that made me gain weight, but I'm still at my heaviest. I just want to cry all the time. I don't have anyone I can talk to about this. I keep trying not to eat and then eating so much because I'm hungry. I'm scared I'm going to get an eating disorder. I just want to cry. Is there anything I can do??

My first ever digital painting without Ai helps!

A welcoming place for poetry, rough sketches, paintings, songs, short-stories, novels, home-made things etc. Every bit of our art demonstrates our humanity and fights stigma. Everything we create is a form of much needed self-advocacy. However, please no AI.

https://www.reddit.com/r/schizophreniacreates/

I was just wondering if there's a form of schizophrenia that creates positive, happy uplifting hallucinations? The condition is usually marked with quite nasty, negative and scary audio and visual hallucinations, but can they show up feeling like angels rather than demons?

Just curious, random shower thought, I've never personally experienced any such illness, it must be terrifying.

I want to start this off by saying; taking your medication on time and consistently is key to stability at first. However, at least for me and for many others, life becomes more dull while on antipsychotics like abilify, etc.
(Comment your medication name and overall experience, I want to know and it can help others on their journey)
Secondly,

I used to smoke, take shrooms, abuse antidepressants and relaxants, and drink. This combination of mind altering, psychoactive, hallucinogenic substances, caused me to start having drug induced psychosis, to a pretty extreme level. I was diagnosed with bipolar with psychotic features, and schizophrenia. I’m not sure if they just classified drug induced psychosis as a diagnosis, or if I’m actually schizophrenic..

All I can say is, I have gotten a lot better, I’ve been medicated on abilify for 1 year and some change. The voices I heard are completely under control, they feel like my own thoughts, and I’m almost completely back to normal, and I realize they are not some external voice, instead just my own thoughts feeling like they are coming from exterior sounds instead of playing in my head like a normal thought would.

I started to feel a lot more stable after taking my first few months of abilify injections, but recently I asked my doctor to halve the dose. Then I took a trip to Australia, and had to make a 30 day supply of 9mg tablets last 90 days, so I kind of made a unsupervised decision to take my medication every 3 days to make it last (not recommended without speaking with a doctor first)

Thankfully it all worked out and now,I actually am on 3mg daily which is pretty much the same thing, even lower than my halved dosage.

I really wanted to join the military, so if my symptoms go away I think I’ll try to talk to the doctor to have them remove my diagnosis if that’s even possible because then it means I was just under drug induced psychosis and it’s not a mental health issue.

Thanks for reading :) 🖤🙏

I want to go to Alaska, I want a career and friends… but thx to schizoaffective I can barely clean the house… feels bad man

Hey everyone!

I'm pretty sure many of you will come here thinking I'm having a psychotic break and have disconnected from reality but hear me out.

About a month ago I started really pondering life and where I'm at (because my mom turned 70 and losing my dad made me realize everything is fleeting).

Along this pondering came introspection. I took a very deep dive into who I am and have become and tbh some of the things I found were both interesting and frightening. In doing so I was able to identify character flaws and things I didn't like about myself which in turn enabled me to start correcting them.

Among those things identified were traits I inherited when I was first struck with mental illness and basically was able to separate everything into categories.

Anyway I started trying to fix these things and at one point I felt a huge mental shift.

I felt reborn. I felt as I did before getting hit with PS.

No more symptoms. No anxiety. No hallucinations. No social awkwardness. No more being jaded. No laziness. No more excuses.

I was so fkng happy.

This lasted 4 days. I was revelling in the situation. But then... I shifted back. The same heaviness in my mind. Not sure of myself. Symptoms. Erratic. I legitimately almost cried because its like being handed this awesome gift you've been wanting for 16 years just to get it taken away shortly after.

Since then I've been trying to force it back and at times I start feeling better but not close to losing all symptoms and feeling like myself again like that first time.

It comes and goes.

I really want it to be permanent but for now I'm just taking it in stride.

Anyway thanks for reading.

✌🏼

• I dont imagine voices in my head unless I am lacking conciousness such as being very sleepy or when I smoked marijuana one time.
• I do have a general paranoia towards others
• have friends and like to socialize but also kind of have a distrust towards others intentions. I have felt like everyone was against me even if its not true. I have a general outlook of most people self serving and has selfish intentions.
• My thoughts used to be extremely disorganized but I had to work very hard to fix that. I read so much and listend to so many lectures and it helped my speaking seem more ordered but it feels rehearsed.
• I am often in a delusional fantasy world.
• I used to think I was a messiah who was going to save the world.
• I have a lack of emotional expression.
• I talk to myself too much.
• I have family members who are schizophrenic.

Do you guys think its a good idea for me to go through treatment or is it possibly a misdiagnosis?

Once my disability comes in, I'm thinking about attending community College part time to get a degree in business. I was ironically studying psychology when the onset of schizophrenia set in and I had to drop out. But I've improved enough now that I feel like I could go back. What are you're thoughts, opinions, or ideas about this?

I was approved for disability benefits several months ago, and I have a reassessment a few years into the future, but I'm worried about it because with medications my positive symptoms are largely suppressed and it's more episodic and stress triggered for me. I can still have hallucinations but I haven't had many issues for a while.

My biggest worry is telling them this and potentially being kicked off because of that, even though I've never been able to hold a job for more than a few weeks and I doubt I would be able to with all of my other symptoms that make life difficult.

Is there anyone that's been on disability that can give me some kind of advice or reassurance?

I swear it's like I have a phantom feeling of them on my back and it's like I know how to fly, i have the urge to just jump up and flap these imaginary wings, is something wrong with me?

As in blunts and blunts of weed non stop and I can’t help it and consciously I take a PRM and it doesn’t work because of me smoking blunts and blunts of weed, consciously I don’t even see the weed, think 150 blunts daily, just stopping smoking weed will cure my schizophrenia please help me.(Serious answers only)
I don’t see the weed I smoke and get high off basically
(Serious answers only please you can change my life)

Yesterday evening, I talked to the home manager about going off my medication and she warned me of the consequences. If I refuse my meds again, I'll be put out and probably hospitalized again. So I can't go off my meds, and I feel as though I have no freedom.

anyone else went down a huge rabbit hole on gnosticism when they were in psychosis? I have finally gotten back on my antipsychotics and come out of this episode. Basically, I started being shown stuff on the internet about gnosticism, which aligned with the current delusion I already had. Naturally, I thought this was a sign from the universe that I was ready to receive this information, and became absolutely convinced of it. It spiralled from there. Luckily I was able to get out of this. Anyone else had a similar experience with gnosticism?