My Journey So Far: Finding Meaning in Schizophrenia

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Inner and Outer Views of Schizophrenia

It's easy to underestimate how ordinary suffering can look. Expressions of sorrow and grief (if not the visage of anguish) are the expectation, but as a person with schizophrenia, I know how silent and subdued suffering can look, feel, and be.

Suffering without proof or measure is what makes schizophrenia so difficult. I doubt it's real, and I'm fooled into thinking that because the mind is unseen, my claim to suffering is false. But in truth, it creates a world of delusion and hallucination that swallows me whole, consumed by a despair that blurs my sight.

The First Years After My Diagnosis

When I was first diagnosed in 1997 (at age sixteen), accepting the diagnosis was difficult and a constant struggle, as I was symptomatic and impaired for several years after the onset of the disorder.

I wanted something else to be true, at the time—maybe a virus had infected my spine, or it was a symptom of a temporary concussion—something besides the hard reality that my mind was not my own.

My wish was, in some sense, granted through the changes I went through. I withdrew from family and friends to a point where I did not recognize my inner world or the outer one, wholly removed from reality and unable to see clearly that something had gone desperately wrong.

People and places caused no feeling of connection, and I found myself lost and dazed by strange medications and a new, distorted, and disorganized mind.

Drowning in Absence

The symptoms could be torturous, as I discovered them. I began going through alogia, or what doctors call paucity of thought and paucity of speech.

I'd catch fragments of thoughts here or there, but they were few and far between, quickly vanishing before I could see or hear them fully. My inclination to speak was equally battered and absent.

I felt as if I was drowning in my own mind—my sense of self and grasp of how I relate to others replaced by despondency and the inertia of my body and will.

It didn't seem to matter what I did. Depression and delusion pulled me under, and I was left to fight against the currents of paranoia and psychosis.

Suspended in Time

My method of coping for the first several years after diagnosis had been to isolate, hide, and hope the sting from whatever threatened my safety would go away.

I obsessed about everything that went wrong, as I saw it: People who treated me poorly, my family (who at times had been unsupportive), medical caretakers whom I had been furious at, and anyone who popped into my mind that I could blame.

I still felt at fault, however—All fingers pointing at me.

I rarely left the bedroom I grew up in at my parents' house for several years after diagnosis, and if the silence and stillness of the room were broken, the walls and furnishings held in place felt like they would surely collapse and crush me. How could I risk leaving?

A Way Out

When I was in my mid-twenties, my health improved, and I began working full-time. I was excited to take on a role that (to me) was a major accomplishment.

I approached the challenges I found at work as an exercise in stubborn resilience.

Each day felt like navigating a vast obstacle course, and I calculated simple survival to get to work and back home in one piece as best I could.

I worked as a retail clerk in a department store, bumping my way through the company's employee recognition program until the retailer invited me to take a trip to a location in Seattle when I was twenty-seven. Some months later, a role opened there in Seattle. So, I applied for a transfer and left shortly after it received approval.

I had little security, though—no concrete reason to think I'd be okay.

Losing Insight into My Disorder

The great optimism I felt when moving from Utah to Seattle caused me to lose sight of my condition, and my insight into my disorder deteriorated to a point where I believed I no longer needed medication. It's a pernicious state of mind called anosognosia, caused by a cruel disorder that has no empathy or compassion for whom it harms.

Non-adherence to medication resulted in a suicide attempt at twenty-nine, and it's still hard to make sense of it. How I felt was intolerable. And the quickest way out I could see was to subtract the things causing me pain: My body, mind, and spirit. Attempting suicide seemed like the sure solution, better for everybody (or so I thought).

I was embarrassed. I was exposed and could not deny that I needed help. It was no longer my call to determine how long I would live.

Finding Meaning in Work

The events in Seattle brought me back home, where my family comforted me in the face of my absolute defeat. I resumed treatment and adherence to medications, leaning on my parents and family to make sure I did not try to poke the void again while recovering.

With limited options for how I would support myself in the proceeding years, I applied for disability income from the Social Security Administration.

A lawyer handled my case and application appeal that was approved, securing a small income I could use to stay afloat.

I started thinking more broadly about where I could go from there, and college felt like the most hopeful action to follow.

The first classes I signed up for were remedial English and math, both of which were difficult with my former level of education.

I loved being a student, even though my studies required arduous memorization that drained me mentally.

College did wonders for my self-esteem and health, as well. I kicked around campus for about five to six years or so, earning an associate's degree in general studies.

My grades in any class requiring math and the relative ease with which I learned English pointed to an apparent future as a writer (and by all accounts, never one as a scientist).

So, I studied English for a couple of years until a friend who had been promoted to director at a marketing agency in Salt Lake City reached out. They are the most curious person I know and have an infinite fascination for evolution, experimentation, and empowering people who (generally) don't think like others.

The Long View

My life, as I see it, has been an odyssey compared to what I had known as a sixteen-year-old, given the impossible task of living with such a damning disease.

I've now had three major episodes of psychosis: the first in 1997, the second in 2009, and the third at the end of 2021.

There's a pattern there that I am bracing for in the coming decade, and the more I go through psychosis, the more acute and physically painful the episodes have become.

Paranoia seems to leave a mark on the ancient and primitive parts of my brain, and the side effects of medication can overwhelm my comfort. Hallucinations and delusions feel more like my body is being whipped and pulled apart in stages of psychosis, strapped to a ghoulish device headed by a deranged executioner.

I should've grieved for my diagnosis much sooner than I did, finding my way through psychosis as a teen and young adult. But there is much more meaning to my experience because of my ability to write. It's a practice that brightens and strengthens the broken parts of me the more I communicate and share.

Renewing a Sense of Self and Hope

I'm finally talking about the challenges I've faced in therapy and in peer support, and I've discovered much more about myself, reflecting on how so many years of feeling, thinking, and living as a person with schizophrenia have brought me a deeper, richer self-awareness and pride.

I never envisioned being as old as I am, but I've learned that memories fade just as sure as the past unfolds in a continuous push into the future (if I let it).

A Consolation for Schizophrenia 

The meaning I've found as a schizophrenic is in the moments that renew a sense of hope among the hardships and the sheer force of optimism and determination that gets me through bouts of psychosis.

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, "We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode on the blissful repose of nothingness," and that may be the consolation for living with schizophrenia: Finding a blissful repose of nothingness on which episodes of suffering are a disturbance.

I can accept hallucinations and delusions when they return, knowing now that it's impermanent and not the end.

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