Life can definitely keep you on your toes. Life is good right now. Well, not the total best- no car  no phone etc. but, I put things in my little box  in my head for things to deal with later and I'm pretty happy most of the time. I am at peace for the most part and calm. I am not currently experiencing any mood changes, I'm neither manic or depressed.

But...I have this little problem. When I don't take an anti-psychotic, I am paranoid as fuck. The littlest things can set me off. My roommate wakes up and just looks at me weird and suddenly I think she hates my guts and asking me to move in with her and that she is thinking all of these bad things about me. Same at work, just the wrong comment or look and it sends these negative things flying and I just think people are staring at me or talking about me and it's just awful. When I take my anti-psychotic, generally I am a-okay. Except today, I had to take an extra dose...hence keeping me on my toes. I have made the decision- I am going to call a psychiatrist and get an appointment tomorrow.

I know bipolar dx very well, inside and out. I could write a manual. So I have been confused recently as to why I'm experiencing psychotic synmptoms when I have no other mood symptoms. The psychosis should only be present when I am manic or depressed, not in a normal, stable, healthy mood. UNLESS...I have schizoaffective disorder.

I know, quite a bomb. It's weird to think about that but I am trying to explain myself to myself. Schizoaffective (SA) and bipolar (BP) are almost the same disorder with a few differences, mainly that psychosis continues to be present even when you are not experiencing a mood disorder. It tends not to be the severity of schizophrenia and not all of the symptoms, but at the same time, when the moods remit, psychosis remains.

So what's going on with me? I don't know. I don't like it. It concerns me on some level. I am doing awesome on so many fronts, but it eats a lot away at me...trying to quell the paranoia and other delusions that may come up. It takes a lot of energy away from other things I could be doing and it affects my peaceful and happiness states. I don't want it to get worse, so I would feel better being monitored by a pdoc of some kind. I still want to find alternatives to help me, but since they are not real strong right now for my psychosis states, I want to supplement them. And I truly want advice.

Otherwise things are going along pretty well. I decided recently that I am going to take down my support group and website and I am going to rebuild new ones, more on a focus on mad pride, and being yourself and self worth, self esteem and things like that. To build ones self up, be proactive for your health and a more general approach to mental health than the self injury. It was a hard decision to make, but the right one. I am ready to move on and do something different. And I feel like I laid a different kind of foundation when I started those things seven/eight years ago. I am so different now and I want to go a different path with this- more holistic approach. It was weird to just build on the foundation I already laid and there was some frustration. So if I just tear down the old foundation and lay a new one, I think everything will be a lot smoother and less frustration for everyone. We will see, time will tell.

So that's life right now. The after life is full of so much...I can't believe years later now and I'm questioning my disorder even more, but I want things to make sense. And my psychosis should be gone if I'm not experiencing any mood changes. So it's frustrating. I hope my doctor tells me something different because, I dont' know...the schizo label thing is...odd. And I know labels are labels and I am mad pride so it shouldn't matter. But let's face it, sometimes it does. I knew a long time ago I was bipolar even before I was diagnosed. It fit, it was natural. And I feel like this disorder is more of a blessing than a curse and I'm okay with it.

Maybe I am hypomanic and I have just been hypomanic for longer than I have ever been. So the psychosis is still with a mood. But then that is scary- it opens the door to so many more questions...like will there be a crash and what would it look like? Would I go further up and disconnect from reality. I don't know what is scarrier, the schizo label and just dealing with the intermittant psychosis with meds or knowing I am cycling and having to figure out how stop any fall out and depression or stopping myself from going too far up.

Still so much to consider in the after life. And I have opened my eyes up to alternatives to the way I am treating my disorder. I am learning still. My mind is growing tired. I will write more later when I feel clearer about my thoughts.

Maybe, I am controlling the moods just fine but it's harder to control the psychosis and so I need to focus less on label and more on just ... how to I handle the psychosis. Is there a med that alleviates the symptoms of psychosis.

Something to think on.

:-)
Erin