Monday, July 25, 2016

Ruminations on schizophrenia


Schizophrenia has positive symptoms (strange name – they include delusions, confused speech and thoughts, all sorts of hallucinations) and negative symptoms (lack of emotion, lethargy). For more details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

Well, schizophrenics eventually stumble across coping strategies – things that can help make life with schizophrenia a bit more bearable. One of my strategies is sleep. However, that tends to eat into the day so just over a week ago I started getting out of bed early. Discovered that you can’t change sleeping habits just by deciding to do so – I decided to bribe myself to get out of bed by promising a cup of tea, porridge and a DVD – but it is an ongoing fight. Discovered that you need to choose your battles wisely – by all means, get up early on some weekdays – but for days where an early rise isn’t quite so important, have a modest lie-in.

Another coping strategies for me is music. I find it helps suppress me from hearing voices and from having “mind’s eye” visions. I have been having a disturbing vision where parts of my body turn completely black, a light blue hexagonal pattern covers those parts and then they disintegrate into nothingness. Is there any wonder why I sleep a lot and listen to music? People with vision are sought after in organisations however, if you tell them you have visions, they are not so keen. Another well known strategy is distraction. So I read computing books and test pre-release versions of lubuntu Linux. It keeps my brain active and healthy.