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| Home | About | Contact | Vitamins for Schizophrenia |
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Last week's blog focused on the wisdom or lack thereof that could be found in the therapeutic profession. It is true that not all of us have the luxury of shopping around for a good therapist who will understand our needs. This week I would again like to address this important issue: what can you do within your means to improve matters?
Too often we feel powerless against the wave of inadequate therapy resulting from state budgets and personal financial shortages. Our therapist for example, while showing initial promise, caused my Darling to fall right back into his denial. At least I'm no longer in denial!
The first important thing to do in the face of this is take away the feeling of helplessness.
Make a list of the things you wish you could do to improve your own or your partner's therapy or overall situation, but can't. Things on this list could for example include a therapist who is not very understanding, drug side-effects, a partner who is unwilling to take the medication, etc. Now put this list aside.
Next, on a separate sheet, make a list of the things you can do. This may require some thought, but you will soon see that you had more power than you thought. An example could be talking as honestly as possible to your partner. Make the sufferer aware that you do not want to play the parent, but rather the partner. Talk to him about the therapist and things that may be bothersome about the particular professional.
Another item on the list could be talking to the therapist, both with and without your partner, about the problems you are experiencing.
Further items may be keeping yourself and your partner as physcially healthy as possible, or even finding a hobby that you can enjoy together or on your own.
Even the smallest thing that you can do is empowering when you see it on paper. If any of the above things are tried and do not work out (especially the talking part), simply cross it from the list, knowing you gave it your best shot.
Try to add at least one item per day to the power list.
When you have made your list of things you can do, burn the other list. Replace an attitude of "I can't" with "I can". Little may change initially, but you'll feel more positive, and be in a position to make more creative choices. Ultimately a more positive attitude is better for both you and your partner.
Last week I talked about chemical support. The week before that I went on about friends and personal support. Today I'd like to address professional support for both the partner and the sufferer of SZ.
It is a frequently unfortunate fact that we are all human. We each have a unique combination of needs and hang-ups. This is what makes mental illness, and especially SZ, so difficult to a) cope with and b) treat. And this is why it is very important to find the right doctor to suit the sufferer's and the partner's particular needs.
So how to do this?
First, let's deal with the SZ sufferer's therapist. The partner of an SZ sufferer is a vital component in treatment. Not all psychiatrists understand this. Therefore it is important to make sure that you at least visit a new therapist together for a couple of sessions. Also make sure that the therapist includes you and recognizes your importance in the scheme of treatment.
If the therapist makes you or your partner unhappy in any way, try talking about it. If the problem cannot be fixed, you need to find someone that can work with the both of you in a positive way.
Secondly, if you feel that you need professional help as a partner, also find somebody who is going to be positive about your choice to be with an SZ sufferer. A therapist who criticizes your life choices, or tries to change them, will only make you negative.
Before seeing a new therapist then, draw up requirements and questions that you have. And again, talk if you have a problem with how the therapist handles you, or find someone new if the problem seems to remain.
In general positive and negative attitudes from others tend to influence SZ sufferers and their partners more strongly than others. It is therefore tragic that therapists who should know better often make the problem worse by their attitude.
So, whether in a social or professional setting, make sure that you as far as possible surround yourself with people who are positive towards both your partner and you. You need to feel that professionals working with you care about both of you and your feelings.
We all need acceptance. Not everybody will be understanding. When you find someone who is, keep that person in your life at all costs.
There are several silent storms in the life of a person who has to live with an SZ sufferer. Basically there are two kinds of storm: the external one in the household, and secondly the storm within. Because the focus of mental health professionals has until recently been mostly on the problems of the ill person, less thought has been given to the problems involved in sharing a household with an SZ sufferer. The greatest problem in my life as partner has been coping with partner-induced depression.
One day I found myself just sitting. I was looking down, and my entire body felt heavy. So did my mind. I did not feel like doing anything but sitting like that. That was the deepest depression I had ever suffered, even counting my years as a teenager. I needed help.
It must be noted here that the depression I'm talking about is fairly mild and completely induced by the circumstances surrounding me. If you went into a relationship with an SZ sufferer with mental problems of your own, please look for professional help.
On the other hand, if you went into the relationship as far as you know in perfect mental health, I would suggest a number of alternatives before getting onto heavy medication such as Prozac. The next few weeks this blog will then look at strategies to help cope with the inevitable depression of having to deal with our inner storms.
The first strategy is at all costs to avoid harming yourself.
When depressed, it is a great temptation to succumb to "crutches" such as drinking, harmful drugs, smoking and over-eating. These again could be conducive to even more harmful effects such as physically harming yourself or even suicide. Ironically, many of the crutches people tend to lean on only make the depression worse.
My drinking for example seemed to magnify every negative emotion I was feeling to gigantic proportions. My control would then slip away and the inner silent storm would burst out noisily.
Another good strategy to compliment avoidance is substitution. You could substitute any harmful crutch your attracted to with something less harmful such as herbal or homeopathic remedies. These have less serious side effects than clinical depression drugs.
There are many natural supplements that could help for the worst of silent depression storms. I have found St. John's Wort to be an excellent picker upper. Naturelle makes an extra strength version that has carried me through many a storm. Other available supplements that can help you feel better include Vitamin B12. Both of these are available over the counter at your local pharmacy. You could also see a professional herbalist or homeopath to help you with your specific problem. A good homeopathy site is ABC Homeopathy (www.abchomeopathy.com), which includes an online remedy finder and shop.
When you're feeling even only slightly better as a result of healthier choices, you can begin to take further action to increase general well-being. When you keep yourself healthy both emotionally and physically, you are also better able to provide your partner with a healthier environment.
First, thank you all for your wonderful comments. It is great to hear from all of you, and also to know that I am not alone in this.
A note: to simplify typing (and reading!) I abbreviated "schizophrenia" to "SZ".
Today, we'll address the issue of guilt. Many people in today's world, especially those growing up in extremely religious homes, are riddled with guilt complexes of various kinds. Of course I don't want to malign any religion. Religion can be a wonderful and beneficial thing. It is however unfortunate that guilt often plays such a large part in religion and child rearing. I was no exception. I've been weaned and raised on guilt.
And this translates to my relationship. In the beginning of my relationship with Darling I was bewildered by a variety of things, not least of which was the fact that my marriage seemed to be crashing. And the bad turns of SZ didn't help. When having a relapse for example, Darling would become excessively religious and lay on the guilt trips. He would for example get into my not so rosy past and make me feel lower than as he would put it "shark shit" (an expression he picked up in the Navy).
Maybe the guilt was a good thing. I did a fair amount of as-honest-as-possible soul searching. Was all this really my fault? Why was he having relapses? What could I do to change this? This is the kind of guilt that many partners of SZ sufferers live with on a daily basis. Since we want so much to help, we tend to take the blame for everything, even adding to the guilt already caused by the situation itself.
The good news and the bad news is that nothing is anyone's fault. The great sinner is the illness; over which neither the SZ sufferer nor the partner has any control. So we can absolve ourselves. And we can do our best. And we can try to understand.
The manifestations of the illness is no more the partner's fault than the consequences of cancer or heart disease.
On the other hand, there are steps we can take to ensure stability, which is crucial to a mentally ill person's life. We can work on ourselves to be loving and secure instead of angry and afraid. We can help our partners to realize the importance of taking their meds regularly and keeping their stress levels low. We can find out everything possible about the illness in order to understand and to help. Feeling guilty, while it could lead to better self-knowledge, is hardly helpful to the situation.
So rather than guiltily trying to establish what it is we could have done to trigger the latest relapse, let's try to keep our partners' lives as stable as possible, and ourselves as happy as possible.