The Process of Recovery

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

I’ll be the first to tell you that recovery from schizophrenia or any other major mental illness is a very long process, it can take years to get stable, if actual stability is even real.

It’s important to work at it though and be cognizant of the steps you are taking to improve your mental health.

I’d even go so far as to say it’s not so much a process but a journey with the ultimate goal of feeling comfortable in your own skin and in society.

I think I’m at a pretty good point right now, my meds are doing their job for the most part, I haven’t had an episode in about 3 months and I’m slowly getting a better handle on my anxiety.

Granted I don’t go out in public that often and when I do, I usually have to contend with paranoia but in all respects, I feel ok right now and that’s the most I can ask for.

It has taken me 17 years so far to get to this point of relative comfort but along the way, I have learned who I am as a person, what my triggers are, what I do and don’t feel comfortable with and what to do in triggering situations.

I have also amassed a pretty expansive bag of “tools” for dealing with paranoia, anxiety, depression, mania, really anything that comes up so I have a method to cope.

That said, it’s very easy to lose yourself in moments and I still do pretty often.

My point of all this is to illustrate that I still struggle daily with my illness, but 17 years out, I’m used to most of what can happen and it doesn’t affect me nearly as much as it did when I was first diagnosed.

It’s true that I am not what you would consider “healed” but I think the reality of it is that I never will be and the most I can do for myself is to try to build a quiet comfortable life where my symptoms are minimal and I feel at peace.

Recovery from mental illness is not what most neurotypical people would think of as recovery, in that, barring some incredible medical discovery, major mental illness can’t be cured.

The most we can hope for is to find a measure of comfort and stability where are symptoms aren’t affecting us too badly.

That, to me, is success when you’re living with schizophrenia.

It ultimately comes down to learning about, and eventually finding out who you are to the best of your ability.

This includes your preferences, the things that set you off, your fears, the things you’re proud of, your accomplishments and just what exactly makes you tick as a person.

If you know yourself well, you can anticipate and prepare for those moments and situations that might knock you off your game.

You can have the confidence of knowing that whatever happens, you are still you, you are still the person that you have found yourself to be.

In this, if you do get knocked around and lose yourself mentally for a little while, you can always come back to your baseline of who you know you are.

It’s a strange situation living like this and although I don’t want to sound like a life coach, if you know yourself, You know what you can handle.

I think that is essentially stability, or recovery in the most understandable terms.

If you’re not there yet, give yourself time and patience, rely on your support structure and know that whatever happens, you are not alone.

Telling Others About Your Illness

/ Mike Hedrick / 2 Comments

For a long time, I actively rebelled against disclosing any information about my schizophrenia, even avoiding the subject matter altogether so that I wouldn’t have to tell people I had it.

I remember bringing one of my books to a friend at a bar one night, and an older woman struck up a conversation with me about it. Disclosing was pretty unavoidable due to the book being specifically about my psychotic break. When she asked me if I had schizophrenia and I said yes, she actively recoiled and shook her head as if to get a rotten taste out of her mouth.

In another instance, I was on a first date with a woman and she asked what I did, as is customary, but against my better judgment, I told her that I write about living with schizophrenia, she proceeded to ask if I have ever killed anybody.

The point of all this is to say that schizophrenia is a frightening word and, though it has lessened in recent years, there is still a great deal of stigma surrounding major mental illnesses.

Those instances are only two examples of myriad circumstances I’ve been part of where disclosing my illness has dramatically altered and in some cases ended entire interactions.

Throughout my writing career it’s been a challenge not to disclose, given the subject of my work, and I’m sure that contributed to a long period of burnout I experienced for almost 5 years.

During that time though, I didn’t have to tell anybody and that was a breath of fresh air.

Also during that time, society shifted its view of mental illness thanks to the millions of young people being open about their anxiety and depression on social media and across the internet.

Many famous people have also disclosed their struggles with mental illness.

Because of that, the word “schizophrenia” doesn’t have the weight it used to, and people, myself included, are more willing to speak about their struggles with the illness.

That said, if you’re afraid to tell people about your diagnosis, that is perfectly valid and rational given the media’s portrayal of major mental illness and the resulting stigma.

You don’t have to tell anyone if you don’t want to and it’s perfectly acceptable to keep it to yourself.

Hopefully you have a strong circle of support where you can feel safe discussing your struggles but if you don’t there are groups and resources available.

Disclosing your illness is entirely up to you.

Even I’m still guarded about it but if you feel compelled to express yourself and find community, this blog is a safe space.

I wish you guys the best and please remember, you’re never alone.

Forgiving Yourself For Your Past Mistakes

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

I know how easy it is to fall into a spiral of beating yourself up.

One minute you’re thinking about something completely innocuous and then that will somehow trigger a memory of something you did or said that you regret, and before you know it you’re overanalyzing and replaying this situation that you can’t change even if you wanted to.

Sometimes this spiral goes on for a long time.

Sometimes it can wreck your mood and your self-esteem for the entire rest of the day.

It’s probably something you never even meant to do either, like saying something that seemed fine at the time, but, looking back on it now, 10 years later, you realize that it could have been completely misconstrued into something horrible.

That’s when the regret kicks in and it’s not fair because you didn’t even know you were making that mistake.

I fall into this trap at least several times a week when my mind is wandering and I lose my grip on things for a little while until I finally come to my senses and talk myself down.

For example, today I was happily minding my own business eating a cookie having just sat down in my recliner and I got to thinking about how I used to make cookies like this years ago.

I remembered one night specifically where I made a bunch of cookies and brought them to a dinner that my friends were having for everyone, people loved them and they all had at least one or two.

Eventually we all sat down to dinner and I was made aware that it was a vegan menu that night with several of the attendants pretty staunchly adherent to that lifestyle.

At the time I didn’t think twice about the cookies but then today, thinking about this cookie that I was eating, I pictured the butter, the eggs and the milk chocolate pieces and how those are decidedly NOT vegan.

Suffice it to say my mind went running and the guilt just completely sunk my stomach. I was fixated on the regret until finally I was able to pull myself out of the spiral by telling myself that it was ok to make mistakes and that I was just dumb when I was younger.

I also reiterated to myself that, having moved to the other side of the country, I would likely never see these people again in my entire life.

The point of all this is to illustrate that we all make dumb mistakes sometimes.

Many times we don’t even realize it until years later when we’re sitting in our recliner eating a dumb cookie.

It’s important not to beat yourself up for your past mistakes regardless of how mortifying they were.

Take a moment to treat yourself like a kid and say, “Hey Mike, it’s alright buddy, you didn’t know what you were doing and everything turned out okay didn’t it? Also that was years ago and there’s a good chance nobody remembers what happened.”

Basically, just be kind to yourself.

We all screw up and it’s perfectly ok to do that. We are human after all.

Whatever happened is long gone and probably didn’t matter all that much anyway.

You’re good. don’t worry.

What it’s Really Like Inside A Psychiatric Hospital

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

There’s a lot of fear surrounding mental hospitals for various reasons.

Whether it’s the stigma surrounding the unmedicated psychiatric patient, or the numerous media portraying either haunted and abandoned psychiatric hospitals or psychiatric hospitals as essentially prisons full of crazy people, a lot of people are freaked out by the very mention of them.

There seems to be a lot of misinformation about what exactly a psychiatric hospital is and what it’s for though.

The main purpose of psychiatric hospitals is to provide, essentially a resting and rehabilitation place for people struggling with mental illness, primarily those who have exhibited behavior that could be harmful to themselves or others.

While this sounds scary, the majority of the time those patients are just there for the potential of hurting themselves (e.g. suicide attempts, delusional thinking or manic episodes). They are there primarily to rest and get a better handle on themselves through group and focused activities.

The closest thing I can compare it to is like a preschool or summer camp, except everyone is a little nuts.

I wish I had fully realized that when I was a patient in one.

The problem for me was that I was terrified of being crazy and in my brain, at the time, I painted the hospital experience as some oppressive prison where I was being locked away for being a non-conformist mentally ill menace to society.

I viewed it as a betrayal by my parents for putting me there and for treating me like I was some messed up defect that needed to be locked up.

The truth is, I willingly signed the forms for a voluntary 72-hour hold for observation and I fully recognized that something wasn’t right with me.

Whether or not I was fully in the right mind to be cognizant of what I was doing could be a matter of contention.

Further, I believed it would only be 72 hours and I think the betrayal aspect only took hold when I was informed by the doctors that I would only be released when I seemed ready (which turned out to be another five days).

Disregarding the negative connotations and conceptions I had of the place though, it was a relatively soothing environment.

Clean, white walls, private rooms where you could sleep all day if you felt like it, a day room where you could watch tv, play games or relax on couches, and music and art classes, all tied together with rehabilitation focused group therapy and doctor’s visits.

In complete honesty, it really wasn’t that bad.

Certainly not a prison, as one might have you believe.

It’s hard to realize that when you’re in the midst of a breakdown though.

Things are very scary and the only thing you want in the world is to just go home and get into bed.

I won’t forget my time there and I’ve pledged never to go back but in hindsight, my perception of mental hospitals was askew thanks to the chemical imbalance in my brain.

Psychiatric hospitals though, are nothing like the scary pictures of it that I’m sure a lot of you imagine. They are calm, quiet places, where people mostly keep to themselves and where everybody just wants to be left alone. Sure there are outliers but everyone there is suffering in one or another and keeping that in mind helps to humanize the place.

If you happen to find yourself there, try to remember that it’s supposed to be a place to relax, away from the stress of society, it’s supposed to be a place to calm down and get a handle on yourself, not a decrepit prison full of unhinged psychopaths who would kill you at a moments notice.

Overall, it’s ok if you need to take a break somewhere like that, they’re there to help.

The Tenuous Balance of Stability

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

Not only does it take work to find stability, but also to maintain it once you’ve found your footing.

Sometimes what’s required is a strict regimen of being faithful to your meds as well as your personal work or therapy.

You’ll find that it’s incredibly easy to slip up on one or another of these things and the result is an inevitable falling back into psychosis.

You may think, somewhere along the way that you feel better and you may even forget that you have a mental illness.

As a result you may become more lax on taking care of yourself and taking your meds but then, in a matter of time, things will start to get strange again.

I’ve been in that position a number of times and in my experience it’s not something I like doing.

In addition every six months, or every year or so you may find that your meds don’t seem to be working as well as they were, it could be a result of increased stress in your life or something else but there may be a very real possibility that you need an adjustment.

That’s ok, and it happens with me and pretty much anyone else who has to deal with this stuff.

Sadly, it’s a lifelong illness and though right now there’s no cure I still have hope for the future.

The point of all this is to say that maintaining your stability can be a challenge.

I can remember a few years back when everything seemed to be going well. I thought I was doing everything right but for one reason or another I got my wires crossed with the pills I was supposed to be taking,

I started taking less of just one of the 6 pills I take, thinking it wouldn’t make a difference. It was ok for a week or two but then I started to experience more paranoia.

I thought everyone was looking at me and judging me and I sort of fell into the delusion that I was being followed.

Things were bright too though, my thoughts were sparkling and I was able to form connections between things that I had all but missed when I was fully medicated.

It was exciting but it also scared the hell out of me.

I want to be in control of myself and I want to keep myself grounded so I called my doctor. Thankfully we got it sorted out and I was back on my way to relative stability.

Suffice it to say that I know what it’s like to lose your footing and while it may not bother some people to the degree that it bothers me, I think stability is important to maintain, no matter how difficult it is to do so.

If you’re experiencing abnormal symptoms or a relapse into delusional thinking, paranoia, and psychosis, I think it’s important to check in with your doctor and be honest about what’s happening.

They can help.

Also, no matter what happens with you in dealing with this illness, please remember that you’re not alone.

The Weight of Depression

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

It’s no mystery why a good amount of people living with schizophrenia or other major mental illnesses also suffer from depression, sometimes severe.

Be it a function of the illness itself or just the weight of dealing with the extreme circumstances of mental illness, depression is a very real concern.

Mood disorders and mental illness are essentially dance partners in that they move together and affect one another in different ways.

Symptoms of one disorder could trigger symptoms of the other and finding a balance where you can be stable is a long process.

It takes a tremendous amount of self awareness to realize when something is affecting you and manifesting depression.

A drop in mood can set off paranoia and even delusions.

Truly, depression is a serious concern for people living with major mental illness as well as those who don’t exhibit any other symptoms.

Depression can come on as a result of any number of things from the weather, to stress, to relationship issues, and even issues arising at work. It can also come out of nowhere.

In my case, most of the depression I experience is a result of seasonal affective disorder where people report depression symptoms as a result of the changing seasons.

Weirdly though, it’s reversed for me.

Summer is the worst time for me and I’m not entirely sure why.

Every year in the dog days of summer around mid July to August I get the overwhelming urge to just hole up in my apartment, disengage, and isolate.

I just feel miserable.

I’ve contemplated extreme measures like suicide hundreds of times in my life and it never seems to be as strong as it in the deep hot days of summer.

Depression also comes along for me when I’m worried about something for a long time. Most of the time it’s money or relationships but it’s also been times when I just didn’t feel settled, either in work or in life.

Thankfully there were meds to help and along with therapy, I found pathways to feeling better.

It’s an insidious disease though, it can affect every facet of your life to the point where you can’t even fathom getting out of bed in the morning.

It can even make you want to end things.

The desire to kill yourself is a dark and sharp knife that slices at you in the worst moments, it physically hurts to be that depressed.

I wouldn’t choose that feeling for anything.

This is all to say though, that if you’re suffering, I see you, I feel what you’re going through, I’ve been there more times than I can count.

I want you to know that you will eventually feel better.

Meds and therapy can help but time is also the great healer and although it may not seem like it, you’ll come out of it.

It takes an immense amount of strength to carry on when you’re walking through that dark valley but it’s important that you do.

It’s important that you take care of yourself and do what you can to make yourself feel better. Whether that’s calling your mom, or taking a shower or eating a good meal you need to treat yourself well.

Being kind to yourself in moments of darkness can save your life.

If you’re suffering, you can get through this and you can come out the other side. There is help for you if you want it.

I hope you’re ok.

If you or a friend are considering suicide The National Suicide Hotline can provide help for your suffering, Anywhere in the US, at any time just dial 988 and someone can talk.

How to Find Your Stability

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

The process of finding a relative stability after a diagnosis of schizophrenia or any other major mental illness can take a long time, sometimes years.

You have to contend with the symptoms of your illness (which may never go away completely), the stigma and the emotional toll of having mental illness, the various side effects of your meds, and relearning how to be a functional member of society.

I consider myself mostly stable (after 17 years) but I still have blips a few times a year, as I imagine most people in our situation do.

I still suffer from bad paranoia and anxiety, and I still fall into delusional thinking from time to time.

I think all of this is par for the course when you have mental illness and while we may not have asked for this massive disruption in our lives, it’s important to know that we’re not alone in dealing with all of this.

I can guarantee you that every complication, every hard time and every weird situation you’ve gone through with this stuff, another person has experienced.

How do we find our stability though? Or how do we find at least a stable foundation on which to stand?

Just like with any other big life change it requires a steady process of making small improvements to your life, to the way you think, and to how you interact with the world.

Every new day is a chance to do something to support your recovery.

It could be working on your sleep hygiene, and getting better sleep. It could be committing to take a shower and brush your teeth. Or it could just be the simple act of getting up out of bed.

These things can be extremely hard somedays but the fact that you’re choosing to do them means you’re trying and trying is all we can do.

Think of it like this, they say Rome wasn’t built in a day and your stability won’t be either.

If you lay one brick a day, and that’s all you can do, you deserve applause.

Eventually, as the days pass and you keep laying that one brick, you’ll get to a point where all of the bricks you’ve laid have built a house and you’ll say to yourself, “How the hell did I do that?”

As you built that house you also learned building techniques, how to use all the various tools you need, and all the little tricks that make building easier.

What I’m saying is that this house is your stability and you’ve learned the things you need not only to build, but also maintain this house that you now live in.

Just like a house, your stability will protect you from bad weather (negative symptoms) and give you a place of comfort to call your own.

Your house is your sanctuary, and your stability will be a sanctuary too, it’ll give you footing for making it through the day and even taking on bigger challenges if you choose to do so.

It seems incredibly daunting to get there when you’re first diagnosed but if you keep waking up, and keep placing that brick everyday you’ll get there.

All it takes is just one little piece of progress a day.

You can do it, and if you need help there are plenty of options for you.

We’re not alone in this, and we’re all rooting for you.

The Myriad Side Effects of Meds

/ Mike Hedrick / 1 Comment

Along with our daily regimen of medication for schizophrenia comes something that can be debilitating for a lot of people, the side effects.

Of course the benefit of the meds far outweighs the trouble we have to go through as a result of the side effects but still, it’s a sad situation that we have to go through these things at all.

I can remember, near the beginning, when I had just gotten out of the hospital and I was on a med called Abilify. While it worked pretty well for the delusions and the voices it gave me a horrible condition called akathisia where I felt like I was unable to sit still.

I had to constantly be moving my body in some way or else it felt like I was going to explode.

I had to relieve this incessantly so I’d take long three hour walks and walk on the treadmill at home constantly, because if I didn’t, I would feel like I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

The doctor said it go away eventually, but I suffered for a good two months before I had to finally stop that med and try to find something different.

Another thing they don’t tell you at first, is that finding the right combination of meds for your particular brand of crazy can be a years-long process.

It’s trial and error of finding something that both works well enough on your brain to be sustainable, as well as something that works with minimal side effects.

It must have taken me five or six years before I finally found a combination that worked well for me.

In the process I ran the gamut of everything from horrible rashes, to sleeping for 12 hours a day, to gaining nearly 80 lbs.

Even still, seventeen years out, we (my psychiatrist and I), have to make periodic adjustments in med dosage to maintain the level of stability where I can feel comfortable.

I still face challenges as well, things like high blood sugar and insomnia that I’ve had to learn to accept as trade-offs for feeling ok.

Many times I’ve remarked that the side effects can be just as bad as the illness itself.

This, however, is not meant to scare you away and discourage you from taking meds though, as I believe anyone with major mental illness needs theses meds to even survive.

This is meant as a sort of preparation for the realities of living with a schizophrenia.

I won’t lie that it’s a very hard life, but you will get used to it, you will feel better and it will become easier as time goes by.

The amazing thing about humans is that we have the ability to adapt.

Even to what seems to be horrible situations we adapt and we learn to get through it.

It makes us incredibly resilient as a result.

We are battle tested and we become ridiculously strong minded.

There’s not a whole lot that life can throw at us anymore that shakes us because we’ve been through the ringer and have lived to tell about it.

At least that’s how I look at it.

Sure it takes time, sometimes a lot of time, but the fight is worth it and once you’re on the stable side you’ll be one of the most incredible people anyone would have the pleasure of meeting.

I’m here to tell you right now that you are not alone in this fight, there a millions of us out here fighting alongside you and we can provide support.

It’s ok to reach if you need help and it’s ok to feel everything you feel as a result of living with this stuff.

It will get better, I promise you that.

The Religious Component of Psychosis

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

A common delusion among people with schizophrenia is that they have somehow been ordained by God to carry a message or to do something important.

They believe they are either prophets, angels or God himself.

In this thinking they are subsumed with the idea that they have been chosen for a higher purpose and have been given these visions and voices to lead them on a path of righteousness.

Many times they will focus on religious messages, scripture or iconography as a means to find direction for their ‘mission”.

I am no stranger to this set of beliefs.

In 2006 I took an impromptu trip to the United Nations believing I was a prophet and was meant to share a message of peace and balance with the world.

I had become increasingly involved with angelic and religious lore spending hours on the internet searching out information on angel numbers, mysticism, biblical conspiracies and aliens in religious symbolism.

I believed that information was being hidden from the world and that all of these things I was learning about were deeply connected in some way, and that if I could find a universal truth I could share it with the world.

I don’t know why religion seems to correspond so well with delusions and paranoia, but this phenomenon is well documented throughout history with the existence of witch doctors, oracles and other special “chosen ones” who were believed to have had a direct line to the gods within their belief structure.

I don’t know if there’s any truth to those beliefs but I do know that in lieu of suffering with hallucinations and the voices in my head, I would rather take my meds and be as stable as I can be.

I would rather be as grounded in the reality we’ve all agreed on as I possibly can.

I think the elusive nature of religion, that is, being wholly unsure if what we believe is actually real (not knowing if god, or heaven, or hell is real) leaves a lot of fertile ground for us to place our own singular (sometimes wildly misinformed) beliefs on and around.

Religion is open to a lot of misguided interpretation because no one can truly be sure that our beliefs are real.

That lends itself nicely to psychosis and I think it’s why religious concepts are so prevalent in psychosis.

The fact is, we all want to believe in something, we all want to wrap the mysteries of the universe up in some pretty little box and make them easily digestible, because frankly, the immensity of it is incredibly frightening and overwhelming.

None of us truly knows what’s real in this universe and we’re lying to ourselves if we say we do.

Schizophrenia and Love

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

Everyone’s deserving of love right?

There’s no one on this earth that deserves to be alone but for people with schizophrenia and other major mental illnesses, love and relationships can be incredibly hard to, not only build, but also sustain for a variety of reasons.

First, and I hate to say it but there still exists a pretty unshakeable stigma around the ‘schizophrenia’ label.

A lot of people associate that word with danger, instability, or even violence, and while the fact remains that more people with schizophrenia, in fact, happen to become victims of violent crime than perpetrators, the stigma remains.

In my own experience, I can remember being out on a first date with a woman who, with a straight face, asked me if I had ever killed anybody.

This stigma can be one hell of a red flag for a good number of people who have no experience or knowledge of the reality of mental illness.

Being someone with schizophrenia, I’ve seen this first hand and for a long time I just completely stopped mentioning it at all.

I would change the subject when I was asked what I write about, and I would steer the conversation away from any mention of anxiety or even depression.

Mental illness being one of my core personality quirks left very little to actually talk about as a result.

Another major hurdle to finding love as a person with schizophrenia is that, with my paranoid delusions, I find it incredibly hard to trust people enough to open up and become vulnerable.

Trusting someone fully can take me months if not years, and when you’re dating someone new there comes a point at which you have to open yourself up and get to know the person.

I was never able to get to that point because I could never grasp the possibility that someone besides my family had my best interests at heart.

I was terrified that they would hurt me or leave with no explanation and because of that I’d always break it off before anything got even remotely deep.

I am a wounded soul and I need to trust someone completely before I even think about opening up.

I can imagine this is the case for a lot of people with mental illness and it’s important to understand that if you love someone who’s sick, it can take time to form that trust.

Finally, in my experience of having to relearn how to function in society after a major mental break, social interaction still remains to be one of the biggest challenges of my life.

I’m always hyper aware of things like eye contact, how I’m moving, what I look like to people and the way that I’m forming my words.

Sometimes I get so caught up in trying to portray natural human interaction that I either come off as fake or just get too distracted in how I’m acting to even keep up with the conversation.

I know the answer is to just relax and be myself but for a long time I was confused about who myself even was.

It’s for this reason that I’m pretty deeply introverted and choose to keep to myself most of the time.

I get most of my interaction online where it’s safe behind a screen to be the person that I wish I was in real life.

The point of all this is to illustrate how hard it can be to find love as a person with schizophrenia or other major mental illnesses.

If it’s not stigma, it’s trusting someone or even just interacting in general.

To my fellow sufferers, I know you and I see you and I want you to know that you’re not alone.

And to those who love people with mental illness, be kind, be soft and take the time to be there for your person.

I can guarantee that if you do, it will be one of the most fulfilling relationships of your life.