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bipolar, dating, friendship, health, love, marriage, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, relationships, schizophrenia], social, wellness
I have read many blogs and books by people with schizophrenia, and many of the writers express a desire to date and eventually get married. Unlike me, there are many people with schizophrenia who live in hiding (not disclosing their illness for fear of the consequences), and many of those people are married. I assume their spouses must know of their illness even if most people in their lives don’t.
On the other hand, I am open about my schizophrenia, and I am married, but it may not be like someone would assume. I was married early in my twenties and divorced before my first psychotic break. I don’t think my first husband would have stayed with me and worked with me if he had experienced my illness. (I say this not knowing for certain because he never had that opportunity, chance, test, whatever it is someone would call it).
I met my second husband after my first psychotic break, but at that time my diagnosis was bipolar disorder. If we had both known at the time that my true illness was paranoid schizophrenia, would we have made it to our wedding? I don’t know. I can’t say. I wasn’t diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia until I was in my early forties. By the time I had the correct diagnosis my husband, and I had been together for at least ten years.
During ten years of marriage, my husband had grown to know a lot about me. The diagnosis of schizophrenia came as a shock to us, and I suppose it could have caused some people to throw their relationship away, but not us. When I received my diagnosis, I had just started to recover from a six-month episode of psychosis. Our marriage was on wobbly ground during that period. I thought during that time that I wanted a divorce. My husband thought that is where we would end up – in front of a judge with a no-fault divorce.
Once I was on medication and started to return to my old self, my husband started to heal from the injuries I caused him during my psychosis, and he started to understand the difference between schizophrenia and me. I am one person when I am on the right medication and someone quite different when I slip into psychosis. This period is where I find my husband to be remarkable. Not while we were dating and thought I had bipolar disorder, but when he had lived with me as someone who was psychotic for six-moths and received no love, or understanding, or connection from me, and then, when I recovered, he stayed and helped me rebuild my life.
Even though my husband and I had a whole history together before discovering I had schizophrenia, I think it is possible for people to find a lifelong partner if they already know that they have schizophrenia before meeting their potential mate. I think having the opportunity to get to know each other is the critical step in the process. Two people need to have some feelings and history together to be able to navigate and process a diagnosis of severe mental illness.
I think the same is true for making new friends. If those of us with schizophrenia let people get to know us a little bit before we tell them our diagnosis, then they will have already developed their impression of us, and first impressions are powerful. Many people meet me, and they know about my schizophrenia before even shaking my hand because other people have told them and many saw an article about me in People Magazine a couple of years ago.
I would prefer that people get to know me before they know my diagnosis, but I don’t always have control of that. I think if you do have control over when and where to tell someone about your illness that it is beneficial to wait until they see who and how you are so that stereotypes and stigma don’t overpower their decision to stay in a relationship.
Everything that is possible for people without schizophrenia is possible for people with schizophrenia we just have to be more creative to make some things work.
I love this post. I definitely agree with getting to know someone first without creating negative stereotypes or stigma about mental illness. My Mom has schizophrenia and although she knows of the illness, she would never admit to having it. She’s had a really hard life and I know it’s easier for her to isolate herself from the world. I’ve been working on showing her the world again and she already seems happier. She’s really just such a sweetheart. 🙂 I love that you share your story. I would love to feature you on my blog or even one of your previous posts. Would that be okay with you? If not, I completely understand. Regardless, I still think you’re amazing!
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Thank you for your kind words. You can post any of my posts on your blog if you want. If you want me to write something specifically for your blog, you’ll have to tell me what you are looking for. 🙂
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I would LOVE if you wrote something specific for my blog. First, let me tell you more, I don’t want this to be misleading in anyway. I wrote my blog as a special tribute to my Mom because she was diagnosed with schizophrenia after my brother got cerebral palsy. I want her to get the recognition she deserves, so I’m using my blog to see if I can make it the next social media platform. (Wild idea, I know!) Obviously, it could never happen but everything is going well so far. I hate that the world we live in makes everyone feel about themselves and with the current administration too many people are being discriminated against Muslims, women, homosexuals, and etc. I’m not doing this to collect money off of anyone, I’m doing this because morally it’s what’s right. Being a human being is hard and we should be more empathic rather than judgmental. If you are still interested, I would love if you could write something for me. I have so many questions, so you can answer any of the following: 1) What do you want people to know about those with mental illness/schizophrenia? 2) How would you describe a typical day in your life? 3) What brings you joy and would you say you are a happy person in general?
4) When you feel sad what do you do to make yourself feel better? 5) What inspired you to blog? 6) If you could change the world we live in what would you do? 7) Do you think it’s hard for your loved ones to understand you and your needs? 8) If you could turn back time would you wish you didn’t have a mental illness? Why or why not?
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I think #3 might be a good choice. I’m not sure exactly when I will be able to work on this though.
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I know that was a loaded response, don’t mind me I just love learning about other people. Please let me know whether or not you would still be interested. 😊
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Yes, but I have several projects that are very important to me going on right now. I’m not sure when I could get you a new piece.
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Aww i love this so much. So glad you found your prince even if you had to kiss a few frogs =p It is also really hard to make and keep friends with social anxiety disorder, let me tell you. And anxiety can get in between my bf and I at times too….mostly when I am fruztratedbecause he may not completely understand.
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Thank you! Oh, I hate anxiety. I suffer from anxiety, too. It really is a battle.
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Thank you! 🙂
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Very good writing and poignant remarks. I have lived as a “high functioning” schizophrenic for 26 years now, and I thought in the spirit of kinship and as an achknowledgement of your quality blog you might like to receive some praise and response to your efforts. Please accept my apologies for my failure to use more senitive language, but I am quite OK with saying just plain old schizophrenia, though my dealings with professional mental health institutions prefers something along the lines of “a person who lives with the experience of hearing voices”. I have nedured anumber of relatively brief periods of psychosis. From the start, as a lover of science, I decided to keep notes about my symptoms and circumstances. Over the years, these notes were refined into what I call “first person rtanscripts” that are quote unquote transcripts of the conversations I have with my voices. These transcripts have a remarkable impact and effect. On the down side, they led me to invest too much belief in the face value origins of my voices. If you read the online mental health forums, most people who live with voices are convinced that the voices belong to people (beings, spirits, demons, ghosts, telepathy etc). Obviously there is absolutely zero evidence to support these assertions, but I find it noteworthy that the najority of people who live with voices reach anavoidably the same conclusion. Acknowledging the value and effectiveness of the hearing voices network, I cannot help but wonder if the medical professsion would alter their language regarding voices if they were exposed to the hundred or thousands of hours of dialogue (symptoms) that the subjects endure. I calculated once that if I see my doctor once every three months (which is considerably more than actual), then if I am asked about phenomenology, I am attempting to summarise at least 720 hours (if only 8 hours per day) or dialogue. Imagine trying to summarise 720 hours of movies or university lectures into a minute or so!!! The two upsides and suprising results of my recording of these transcripts is 1) writing exactly what gets said between me and my voices immediately changes for the better what the generally hostile voices are saying, and 2) there is an unavoidable moral and argumentative success over the voices when they are seen in their true light. They are starkly revealed as uneducated, immature, weak, petulant, contemptuous and very inaccurate. They become impossible to take seriously, they are deflated in their vitriole, and their negative impact is minimised. For me, one of the overall results of writing these transcripts is a sense of superiority, achievement of higher moral ground, and the inability to be hurt or insulted by such vexatious and weak diatribe. With relevance to your article, one thing that I am still working on is the ability to ‘leave the whole hallucinations thing behind’ socially, and not talking about my mental health when I meet people. I apologise for digressing somewhat from my intention to contribute to your remarks about close relationships, but I have to note that my diagnosis resulted in me losing all my friends, primarily because my conversational contributions reflected my mental eccenticities, as an honest person I could not prevent myself from mentioning what I had been hearing. So kudos to you and your husband for maintaining your relationship. I think that your article does good service to readers having the same diagnosis, insofar as it demonstrates that all is not lost for love and friends if you have a psychotic setback. Hope I haven;t written too much. Thankyou for your blog. Scott.
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Thank you, Scott! I’m happy you are here. Can you post a link to your blog, so I can check it out? Thanks.
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