A Day in the Life

Thanks again for your "mindbloggling" comments. They really gave me a lift after my news last time and I really am beginning to think I'm nicer than I thought I was! This is no small step for me after years of barraging myself with negative thoughts, particularly in terms of how I got on with other people. So your comments really are very welcome. Anyway, this time I was going to talk about the way this illness can sometimes make you feel, which has nothing to do with hallucinating or being delusional, but is to do with what are the so-called negative symptoms of the disease. I feel that I experience these even when and despite taking medication. Indeed, perhaps as I have said before, medication can be very good at relieving positive symptoms, such as delusions, but is not so great at relieving the negative ones. According to some literature I have, these negative symptoms can include many different facets, such as "your interest in life, energy, emotions and get up ...

Again thanks for your comments on my blog. As you know they are always welcome. This will only be a very short blog as I have but to relay one piece of information, and that is that my diagnosis, as far as I know, has been updated. My psychiatrist says that this was a diagnosis given in 2005. But I don't think I was really aware of it until recently. Anyway, suffice to say that it's the biggy. The one almost everybody is scared of. Yes folks, its schizophrenia. No longer can I merely say I am bi-polar or schizo-afffective ( which nobody seems to know the meaning of anyway) -I am now one of them- a schizophrenic. And when one speaks of being schizophrenic it seems that such diagnoses become inseperable from one's own identity. For example, the famous psychiatrist R.D.Laing said, "one cannot talk of someone as having schizophrenia. No one has got schizophrenia. They simply are schizophrenic." (from "The Divided Self"). I cannot say that I agree with this...