Recognize your symptoms

In the first post for this blog, I encouraged mental health consumers to write about their psychological and psychiatric experiences. One application of this habit is to help you to recognize the repetition of symptoms that, in the past, have led to a relapse.

In the case of the paranoid schizophrenia I live with, I have noticed, in hindsight, that a period of bad mental health is preceded by a pattern of loss of touch with reality that repeats itself at each relapse. I used to be bad at recognizing that this repetition was occurring. Now, with a written record of my mental state that I look at frequently, I have become much better at recognizing when it’s time to stop, rest, and consult my psychologist and psychiatrist. The problem has always been that my periods of psychosis and paranoia have usually been preceded by a euphoria that causes me to act bizarrely. This alarms those who witness me and eventually alarms even me, which feeds into an inevitable ensuing paranoid state with feelings of rejection. With so much of my experience now written down, I have learned to recognize a pattern that repeats itself before each relapse. This pattern may assume a different guise at each period of a mental health crisis, but I have learned, by writing, to not be fooled each time around.

Don’t be ashamed! Write about it!

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