If you are experiencing a psychotic episode due to paranoid schizophrenia, it is a busy time. The symptoms that cause you to lose touch with reality crowd in, all begging for your attention. You have to deal with perturbation of the senses, sensory overload, an inability to filter what your senses are sensing, the impression of thought insertion by others, and extreme paranoia, to name a few.
To recover, part of the process is that you must gain objectivity. My experience is that I get nowhere until I consciously strive for a context that helps me engage the reality my psychosis has obliterated.
The most critical first step for me is to listen to my psychiatrist and psychologist when they tell me I am relapsing. I have to trust them because psychosis doesn’t necessarily mean you are distressed at every moment. You can also suffer delusions that things are happening that may not be real, but they are enjoyable to you and seem real. If you stay in denial, you try to reason with yourself in a way that makes sense of your psychotic state of mind, and you cannot get well until you consciously make the step of admitting you are sick. The best people to help you are your doctors, not your friends and family, except if they are your caregivers and good ones.
Once my health improves with the help of my doctors and caregiver, I drive the recovery by gaining objectivity. Unfortunately, while I am sick, trying to impress upon me that I should see myself as others see me doesn’t work well. The behavior of some people towards me when I am struggling usually seems more “crazy and paranoid” than my own. Usually, these people complain about me the most and want nothing to do with me. It is better to take a critical view of myself from within that is different from paranoia and is more the goal of getting healthy enough again to do the things I love and to bring reassurance to the people I love.
A critical part of this process is my mental health diary and my diary of events that have nothing to do with my mental illness. Yes, I have two diaries. Once I am doing a bit better with the help of my doctors, I find I can be reasonably factual in these diaries, and when I read them the next day, it really helps me to gauge where I am vis-a-vis a return to who I want to be.
Another critical piece is my love for my caregiver, which, in my case, is my spouse. As I make progress, I become aware of just how worried my caregiver has been, and I am motivated to understand that worry objectively, Then, I motivate myself to take whatever steps necessary, including getting to a better state of mental health, to help the caregiver I love enjoy their life.
It’s crucial to remember that a consumer of mental health is not defined by their mental illness or brain disorder. I try to find things unrelated to my mental health that I can discuss with my spouse and the more sympathetic friends in our social circle. I try to educate them a little about schizophrenia, and they are usually receptive, but I don’t overdo it, so they realize that there are many levels on which they can engage me that are interesting and enjoyable for them.
These are a few of the things I do to gain objectivity following a downturn in my mental health.