Psychosis

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.

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 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.

The Complicated Nature of Your Delusions

/ Mike Hedrick / 3 Comments

At their strongest, my delusions tell me that I am somehow more important than I am.

They try to plant the idea that the world, and everything that happens in it, is either meant for me or a consequence of my own actions.

I know that I am just one singular man in a world of 8 billion people and the things I do, say, or experience are just tiny little blips on the tapestry of existence, but when I’m in the thick of my delusions I can become convinced that the things I’m experiencing are much bigger than me.

They point to a kind of grandeur. It can be even be scary sometimes.

I could lose myself in a song or a video or even a social media post thinking that it was made specifically for me, Mike Hedrick to see, and the rest of the two thousand or so readers are just collateral.

I find it so easy to lose myself in stuff like this and ruminate on it for hours, picking apart every word, every nuance looking for a meaning that altogether just does not exist.

It gets the best of me on more occasions than I’d like to admit.

Most recently, I’ve found myself entrenched in tarot reading videos on TikTok.

I was spending hours watching them on random thinking that they must be choosing me and that the spirit or God was trying to talk to me through these videos.

It sucked me in so completely because it would always be essentially the same message that I was about to receive incredible abundance or meet my soulmate and even now I’m having a hard time separating myself from them.

The promise of good things in my life and my apparent desperation for those good things fueled an unhealthy cycle of obsession searching for new information about my proposed wealth or love life that was hard to let go of.

That’s how delusions get you though, they prey on your most insecure points and make you think that you could have everything you wanted if you just did the right thing or believed hard enough.

I lost myself completely in those videos almost to the point of psychosis.

I think just a little longer and I would’ve been thinking I was a god or a prophet again and on my way to spread peace to the world.

Social media in general though, is dangerous for people with schizophrenia.

A recurring delusion I’ve heard time and time again is that people believe that something a crush posted online is about them.

The dangerous part is the very real possibility that it could be, instead of just a general statement, and that’s where it’s easy to get hung up.

I’ve even seen jokes on twitter saying something along the lines of “Hello if your tweet is about me, please include my full name at the end.” or “It’s pretty crazy that every hot girl on twitter constantly tweets about me.”

Suffice it to say that this delusion is pretty widespread and a very real phenomenon for a lot of people.

If you have a major mental illness though, it can be harder to distinguish the truth about whether or not something is directed at you.

The rule I use is just always assume that it’s not.

That’s saved me a lot of trouble.

The point of this whole thing is to say that delusions can come so easily and readily, that it’s easy to lose yourself completely if you don’t take a step back.

I know I need to disconnect at least twice a month to get a grip on my mental health and I’m surprised everyone else doesn’t actively do that as well.

You have to be careful, and you have to set some rules for yourself because delusions are all too prevalent when you live with major mental illness.

If you experience this, don’t be afraid to take some time to yourself every now and again.

Realize that you are not alone in thinking these things and center yourself when you can.

You’ll be alright and everything’s gonna work out if you keep these things in mind.

The Case for Taking Your Meds

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

It’s a strange thing that when you’re stable, you kind of forget that you’re sick.

Things could be going well, you could feel happy and you think, “Am I cured?”

Hopefully you’re aware that things don’t happen like that and schizophrenia or any other major mental illness is a lifelong condition.

Still, some people start to believe that their meds are either, not doing anything, or that they don’t need them anymore.

I, as a mental health peer and advocate, have to unequivocally refute that and tell you, yes, you still need your meds.

Aside from the stigma of mental illness in general on the public’s behalf, there exists a stigma among people with mental illnesses that meds are bad, that the chaos in your brain is good and that pharmaceutical companies and the government are just trying to keep you quiet and keep you in the dark by making you numb.

I used to think that too until I realized how much better it felt being numbed and quieted than battling these crazy thoughts day and day out. I

don’t want to be crazy and that’s why I adhere to meds.

There’s also the argument that back before modern society, people with schizophrenia were seen as healers, oracles or witchdoctors having a direct connection to the gods, and that if you take your meds, you lose that connection and mysticism of being at one with the universe.

I don’t know if that’s true but I can tell you that in modern society, those beliefs don’t serve us like they would back then.

Also, I take my meds and I still hear God, so that argument can’t be that sound. (that was a joke).

I can even remember that the only reason I started taking the meds in the hospital was to get out sooner, but I realized they were working against the voices and the delusions so I never stopped.

The point is, these meds were researched and engineered in order to give us a better life in today’s modern society.

They are there to help us, not harm us.

My brother always uses the expression “better living through chemistry” and he’s right, I do feel better and I’m able to do more things when I do take my meds.

I don’t want to battle day in and day out for scraps of sanity and I don’t wanna feel like I don’t have control over my own faculties.

I’m a proponent for taking your meds and I think it’s an important thing to do, not just for you and your thoughts, but also for the people around you who love you and don’t know how to interact with you when you’re out of control.

Recalling the feeling of thinking you cured, this happens to me all the time, I’ll forget that I’m actually sick and then for some reason, I’ll accidentally miss a dose and woohaa, here come the delusions.

I would like to not be subject to the inconsistencies of my broken brain.

I hope you feel that way too.

So I’m here to say, take your meds, stay hydrated and get plenty of rest. It can be hard dealing with this stuff.

You’re not alone and you got this.

The Light Switch of Stress

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

I think something that isn’t that widely recognized is the effect of stress on symptoms of schizophrenia and mental illness.

It can be an almost immediate exacerbation, hence, why I refer to it as a light switch.

Stress has the amazing potential to worsen symptoms rapidly for people like me and there’s not a whole lot we can do about it in the moment besides meditate and/or practice breathing techniques.

Alternatively, there are always meds for anxiety and I count myself grateful for that option frequently.

How does stress exacerbate symptoms though?

One way is that it can activate anxiety which is followed pretty closely by eventual paranoia and delusional thinking.

It’ll be like something stressful will happen in our lives, maybe a friend or loved one will say something we perceive to be negative and that seed will lodge itself into our brain.

We’ll cultivate it by thinking endlessly on what they meant causing anxiety until we jump to a conclusion that serves neither us nor them (paranoia/delusions).

It’s almost frightening how something seemingly so small can have such a big impact.

We may lose sleep over it, we may ruminate on it and we may start to let that little word take control of how we see ourselves as a person.

These are all triggers to paranoia, delusions and a host of other mental illness symptoms.

Stress, essentially, seems to be just as bad for mental illness as it for heart health or diabetes.

There are things that help with stress in the moment that you can utilize though.

First, you can talk it out with someone objective to the situation. They’ll usually be able to reassure you that what you think is happening really doesn’t matter all that much. They can lessen the impact of what was said and free you up to move on to other things (that are probably more rooted in reality).

Another thing you can do if it’s still bothering you is put on some music, lay down and take a break by closing your eyes.

If you feel like it, you can meditate and focus on your breath, or you can think it through objectively by asking yourself what someone who isn’t involved would think.

Many times too, the music just acts a sort of salve for the pain of the thought. It can loosen it up so you’re able to dislodge it and let it go.

Finally, you can step back from yourself and notice that your thoughts are just thoughts. That is, they are just images or words that float across your mind like clouds.

You’ll notice that you’re grasping this particular one so hard and intently.

You can let it go though, you can say, “this is just a thought” and you’ll realize that it’s really no different from any of the other thoughts in your head, including the ones you don’t really pay any attention to.

Then you can just release it and it’ll float away too.

Suffice it to say that stress is not something that you would do well to pursue if you have a major mental illness.

Perhaps I’ve helped though, I don’t know.

These are things that work for me and there’s a good shot they’ll probably work for you too.

I want you to remember though, that you’re not the only one dealing with this stuff.

You definitely not alone.

You will get through it and you will feel better.

I know this.

Letting Go of Your Intrusive Feelings

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

If you’re anything like me you go through periods where you get so focused on things that you invariably lose yourself for a while.

Sometimes these things are small little nothings that you’ve overblown in your head, and sometimes they’re actual tangible worries that you have.

These obsessions could be about relationships, health, money or any number of things but those are the big ones for me.

Sometimes I’ll find myself so intensely focused on stuff that I’ll lose track of minutes or hours just ruminating.

Sometimes these obsessions can be painful too.

In these moments, you’re probably thinking really hard about how to solve a problem, planning so intently and rigorously for a future situation that makes you nervous, or overthinking and analyzing a situation to ridiculousness.

I’ve been caught in loops like this on and off for a majority of the time since I’ve been diagnosed and I don’t tend to tell anyone about them. They seem so personal or they seem so inconsequential that you worry you’d sound ridiculous if you said anything.

Sometimes though, saying something is exactly what you need to do, if you’re with someone you trust they’ll probably be able to talk you off that ledge.

Other times, you do speak and the person you’re with has no idea how to respond or what to say.

That can be tough because then you’re worried that you’ve alienated that person which, in turn, can cause a whole new loop.

As I said before, I tend to keep this stuff to myself most of the time but also I’ve taught myself how to lessen the impact of how it’s affecting me.

It’s a valuable exercise for people who overthink and it starts by just simply saying to yourself, “I accept and acknowledge this feeling” If you take those words to heart and you consciously do your best to accept the feeling, instead of fighting it, you can drastically lessen it’s power over you.

If you sit with the feeling and do your best to actively feel it completely, you’ll notice that it fades rather quickly.

At that point you realize it was just one little feeling or one little thought that you were grasping with every ounce of strength that you had.

You realize, now that you see it objectively, that it really didn’t matter all that much to begin with.

You can let it go if you want.

I’ve used this exercise with myself countless times over the last few years and it’s lightened my load drastically.

I’m at peace now with a lot of the stuff that really really bothered me for a long long time.

It may seem hard at first but once you get the hang of it you’ll realize you can use it for pretty much anything that bothers you, it it’ll take the power away from the problem almost immediately.

All said, there is a way to deal with this stuff, and to let go of things that bother you.

Like I said, you just have to accept them, sit with them and feel them instead of fighting and it will make a world of difference.

Hope this helps.

Remember, you are not alone in how you feel and you got this.

Dealing with Psychotic Connections

/ Mike Hedrick / Leave a comment

There’s a funny thing that happens when you’re psychotic, everything seems to matter to an enormous degree. This includes things like errant words you see, nuances of people’s speech and body language, movements people make, lyrics in songs, random numbers you see, titles of books and even things commercials say on tv.

Being hyper-aware, everything has significance of some kind.

In the midst of all this you start to realize that a lot of the stuff you see relates to a lot of the other things you’ve experienced. Could they be connected?

Pretty soon you’ve accepted these coincidences and start to see them in everything, further you start to look for them, sometimes to the detriment of common sense.

These connections eventually start to affirm your delusions and it goes deeper and deeper until you’ve completely lost touch with reality.

This process occurred in a big way for me when I first started experiencing psychosis. Everything I saw was some message or indication urging me to follow it, making most of my decisions for me and leading me into a pretty delusional state.

These connections, as they’ve been referred to, are a common experience for people undergoing psychosis.

Sometimes, they take on the character of something larger, esoteric and divine in your mind. They are essentially your conduit to speaking with God, The Universe, The Aliens or whatever particular higher energy you ascribe to. As such, they take on a strong significance that’s very hard to ignore.

This is part of how I came to the conclusion that I was a prophet meant to bring peace to the world.

Of course these connections are and were not real and I had essentially just fallen into psychosis.

The point of all this is to, first, make people aware that the psychosis people with schizophrenia experience, though not real to the general population, is very real and very significant to those dealing with it.

Second, it’s crucial to realize that this psychosis can give people a sense of being important, powerful and in control in a world where they seem to be entirely overlooked and rejected. That’s why it’s so hard to dismantle.

Imagine living life as you would normally, with all your beliefs and behaviors and your collected knowledge about the world and then one day a doctor comes and tells you that all that stuff is wrong, that you’re imagining everything and that you’re insane, further you have to take these pills everyday for the rest of your life in order to fit in with correct society or they will put you in the hospital.

What would you do?

That’s the experience for people with psychosis and realizing that I think is a major step in caring for those people.

It can be a hard thing to deal with but if you’re a caretaker or a parent, take it easy and take it slow on your loved one.

Getting back to stability requires an entire paradigm shift and an entire reframing of what the world really is and how it works.

These connections are just the start of things that need to be addressed and as a person with schizophrenia, they can be hard to let go of.

There are also a whole host of other facets of the illness that need to be dealt with but connections are a start.

Patience is key and it’s ok to get overwhelmed whether you are patient or a caregiver.

Trust that everything is going to be ok and it will eventually work out.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel and though it will take time, you can get there.