About me and my illness.

I just realized that this blog lacked a true introduction post, so here it is.

A Little Background

I have struggled with mental illness for the better part of twenty years. I was first diagnosed as having Bipolar 1 Disorder with psychotic features. This was while I was teenager. The diagnosis came about because I had a history of depression and then suffered a mania that was severe enough to require hospitalization. My knowledge of mental illness was sparse at best. Over time as I educated myself on the nature and symptoms of Bipolar Disorder I became aware of the fact that I didn’t fully hit the criteria for that illness. There were unexplained symptoms that I suffered from that were outside of my mood episodes. Venturing back into therapy after over a decade of suffering in silence my diagnosis was changed to Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Subtype.

Schizoaffective disorder is mental illness that is characterized primarily by symptoms of Schizophrenia, such as hallucinations or delusions, and symptoms of a mood disorder. In simpler terms imagine if Schizophrenia and a mood disorder(either unipolar depression or bipolar) had a one night stand without protection. Schizoaffective is the bastard love child that resulted from that.

The Bipolar subtype specifier is because I do actually suffer from both episodes of major depression and mania. The symptoms that shifted that diagnosis involve the symptoms that I experience in between the mood episodes. Those symptoms include extreme paranoia, intrusive thoughts, bizarre and non bizarre fixed delusions, belief that others can read thoughts, olfactory hallucinations, and visual hallucinations.

My olfactory hallucinations involve smelling things that are not there. These smells usually involve the smell of natural gas, rotten eggs, and burning smells. My visual hallucinations are more seeing shadowy movements that are other just on the edge of my field of vision or crawling over me depending on the severity of psychosis.

My paranoid delusions manifests in a variety of ways. The most common of which is that people are recording me and/or that they conspiring against me. This will usually goes hand in hand with my belief that people can read my thoughts which is also known as thought broadcasting.

As to my fixed delusions these tend to involve that I am somehow a special person, that I have a mission that needs accomplished. Thankfully these are non violent and more of an I am going to write the next great religious text and change the world type delusion. The religious aspect is also more pagan orientated than christian in nature. During a mania this symptom ramps up and I can easily spend hours a day researching and writing about this topic.

These symptoms have had an impact of my functioning level. I am quite intelligent but never completed University and currently work in a job that well below my intellectual capacity. In other words a low paying dead end job. This job is low stress which is more than likely why I gravitated toward it and have been employed in it for sometime.

Despite this illness I have managed to find myself in a healthy long term relationship. Our relationship isn't 100% perfect but then again none are. The important things are there though; mutual respect, understanding, compassion, support of each other and mutually embracing of differences. I am also mother to wonderful young man (he hates being called a boy).

I have written in journals most of my life and got into serious blogging a few years back. My first serious blog was more sexual health related and is currently on hiatus due to my illness robbing me of my ability to write coherently. This setback was temporary and thanks to medication helping to quiet my mind and giving me back motivation I will be resuming that blog as well as keeping this one. In the future both blogs will be cross linked. My mental illness and its treatment does have some impact on my sex life and relationships and I think that others with serious mental health issues might benefit from being able to read both.

This blog was started because Schizoaffective is rare enough, about only about 0.3 of population has it. This rarity means that there is little out there on this disorder. Yes there are blogs and websites devoted to mood disorders as well as Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective presents its own unique challenges as we battle symptoms of both. I hope that with this blog I can not only shine a light on this rare mental illness but also perhaps encourage others with it to share there stories.