I feel like im losing my mind

[Saoirse2]

Hello. Do you ever feel intense feeling of losing your mind like you're going to act something that can make you go crazy like for example you want laugh and act strange things?

[GodspropLizzy]

Hey Saoirse2, been there, done that, got the t-shirt, to copy the whole nineties cliche. I heard someone say once that the disease has its own personality and deciding which is the disease and which is yours is the hard part. We're all in this together. I know it doesn't sound like help much but you are God's creation and workmanship fearfully and wonderfully made. Read Psalms 139- every beautiful verse, you won't regret It!

[Saoirse2]

Thank you..

[Saoirse2]

Its hard to feel this way.. I rather die than to lose my mind.. Huhu

[GodspropLizzy]

I know! i know! You feel like if you've lost your mind you've lost everything. All my life i have always searched for security- when we were kids we were always moving houses and homes a lot, and i felt so uprooted! Then when i was 13 my mind totally caved on me and i was diagnosed with schizophrenia--> slash ten years later bipolar--> slash my doctor tells me I'm schizoaffect- almost the same difference. Which just makes me feel like I've got the worst of all worlds sometimes...........

But i need to tell you this because, i need you to understand, i understand everything you are going through. With my thirsty need for security has come fear at its every threat to its survival. But i feel like I'm wired that way. And it has betrayed me over and over again!

But you- you've just come out! You've broken the spell! You've expressed your biggest fear! kill the snake in its head! Whatever you're trying to protect from not going mad- your mind, your family, yourself- what you fear is madness, why do you fear it? Because of all the things it will take away, all the love and beauty and sanity and life and relationships and people it will take away, all the ways you will die. but you live now, you love now, you're firing now. So challenge the fear and madness without giving it a mandate. Start doing a checklist of all the reasons why you fear madness and find a recovery plan that you can work with. if it is sadness you fear like i did with my depression, then find all the things that make you happy. If they're not present anymore- create it! I.e. you love children but can't have them- enjoy the orphan kids. you love animals- visit the dog shelter. You want to find God, go to church, read the bible, get into a good bible study. just follow your heart because you know what you need sometimes.

[IChoose in reply to GodspropLizzy]

Wow, you're a real success story! You've just said that there is recovery for psychosis. Please keep telling your story!

[GodspropLizzy in reply to IChoose]

Thank you, IChoose. It was very kind of you. When i read Saoirse2's story i understood myself more. I am just grateful his path is more solid than mine.

I fell in love with Christ when i was eleven. What changed the happy go lucky, radiant girl to a girl with a stint in the psych wards. i kept thinking about the how's and the inbetween's till i realized she's still the same girl. The only difference is that now I am a reflection of Christ's perfect love for me.

I should talk about the disease- there are so many issues and plots around my life that sometimes it seems surreal, but the disease has been one of the shadows that followed me since 13, and probably, knowing how little symptoms get big , 12 years. So, sorry for this essay.........thank you for being patient with me.

I was the girl who nobody could cure. I remember my nurse trying to give me advice with my family saying, 'hands wash each other.' And i didn't understand it. I was so wrapped up in hate and discord. I also remember very well, the day i had to be screened in front of about 300 nurses and doctors, and i remember how my madness left me, together with its protective defensiveness for a little while for me to understand the severe state i was in. I was the Ted Bundy of insanity, any serial crime of madness, delusions, hallucinations, hearing voices, paranoid, mood swings, every chronic instability, you name it, i had it.

I got out of hospital and everybody tried to accommodate me- but it was like I was in this incubator and and half laboratory with everybody trying to adjust themselves around my issues, in case i relapsed. So after the all of about 10 doctors in the ward who had the misfortune of treating me- I was hell! But worse, i was in hell! I got a new doctor from my childhood one. He told my mother, our family friends and all our relatives a relapse was inevitable. I would never lead a normal life. it concurred with my first therapist's theory.

But when i had my baby, everything changed. I can't explain it- he became his name, deliverer, redeemer, saviour, just as the scriptures foretold of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He made me realize God had a plan for everything, even an abusive marriage. Then i met my new doctor when i was pregnant from one of our old childhood GP's. She reduced my meds after he, my old shrink had already drastically reduced it. So now i think my family was like, 'okay, time bomb!'

So I guess i survived a little longer taking a shortcut, from being terrified of losing my mind. And i was, it was the one thing i feared more than anything in this whole world- more than hell! i grew to catering for it, arranging for it, making contingency plans around it. I looked to my sisters to help me raise my baby if anything ever happened. and it was nice thinking of them as my son's other mommies. But i think because i was used to security (false or real) as much as my madness, i grew to think of death or madness as its own inevitable security. So you can see me in the continuum of long issues.

I heard somewhere that everybody is looking for love in their own way. But i never really belonged..............I remember every time things got too much, and i had another volcanic shock, I always had my grandmother and my faith. She was my pillar and my rock and she was perfect.She was beautiful, she was kind and she was good. I could have lived alone with her in a hut forever. Until I realized if i wanted to live in a hut I would have to live in it solo, she was gone. I felt like a part of me that i had only reserved for her was gone, lost forever.

And that depression, no beautiful shrink could help. She told me i could go back to the same amount of Prozac every day of the week. i think we both knew i depended on it. I wish i could tell you what changed or how. My writing skills or wisdom are not articulate enough for that. Just.... there was a parable about lost sheep, going astray and getting lost, wandering and losing their way. When i was too far in death, and pain and depression only love could find me. I was unlovable, unreachable, untouchable-nobody could understand me-but God did. He saved me!

There were times when i cried and i cried so hard and i had nobody to hold me, but God was there. He really is the God of all comfort. So no matter how bad things got, it never got too bad.

I don't want to send this message that we don't need people or life is not about relationships because that is not true and is a lie! But there were wounds for me that many good people helped but only God healed! and is still healing. i think that as long as there is life, there is always healing!

I started speaking in tongues which the bible says is 'groans and moans and murmurings which we cannot express which the Spirit uses to intercede for us and pray for us when we do not know what we ought to pray for.' And that and my meditation quiet time every morning- with a scripture that has an answer to every problem life can ever give you ( I swear, it's like a life manual); These have been my nourishment. Because no matter where i go, how far i fall, i have a shepherd who cares for my soul.

And that's the one thing we're always taught: Christ died to save the world. And it's true! But he also died because he wants a relationship with each one of us. He is the way, the truth and the life! Because this is the one thing that separates Christianity from every other religion in the world; it is not a religion, it is a relationship!

'Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for a friend.' And that is what Christ did!

I was supposed to be dead, imprisoned or permanently institutionalized. And now everyday has so much promise. People say all the time that we can't take back time, but God is a restorer, he's blessed me tenfold! He has, 'replaced all the years that the locusts have eaten.' Every moment I am sane is a miracle!