Schizoaffective Disorder and Dealing With a Crisis

Schizoaffective disorder/schizophrenia and dealing with a crisis can be challenging. My brain is always making up crises. I can’t turn them off even though I know they are part of my schizoaffective and general anxiety disorders. After an initial psychotic episode, I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia, and then re-diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Schizophrenia involves serious, but treatable, delusions and hallucinations. Schizoaffective disorder is a type of bipolar disorder, with milder symptoms of schizophrenia and a lot of anxiety that so often accompanies bipolar disorder. I make crises out of situations that are certainly uncomfortable but not “the end of the world” in reality. So, as people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, how do we deal with real crises when our brains are used to making every little thing into a crisis?

Schizoaffective Disorder and the Crisis of Grief

I’ve found that I’m really good in a crisis, and I think it’s because, having schizoaffective disorder, I’m always bracing myself for one. In other words, when something bad happens, it comes as no surprise.

One of the hardest crisis periods I’ve ever had was when my very close friends Josh and Paul died of suicide within months of each other. It’s hard to write about, even now, over 12 years after Josh’s death and almost 12 years since Paul’s. And I know it’s still hard for their families, of course, so I’ve changed their names. But I have to write about this, because it still affects me. Paul’s death was particularly painful, because he, like me, had bipolar disorder. Obviously their deaths are an emotionally charged topic for me. But the point I’m trying to make is that I dealt with these deaths of people I loved. And I think it was partly because I’m always bracing myself for a hard hit from a crisis.

Make no mistake: Josh and Paul dying of suicide scarred me, to put it bluntly. After Paul’s death, I holed up in my bedroom in my parents’ house, chain smoked all night and slept all day for a couple of weeks. These feelings were brought up yesterday when I listened to the song, The Swimmer by Sleater-Kinney. I listened to that song on repeat during this period. And yesterday, even though I love the song, I had to turn it off. Listening to it was too painful now. I’m angry, selfishly, and I have so many questions. “Why?” isn’t one of them. We with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder know why all too well. Which leads me to the heart of the matter: am I suicidal? The answer, for now, is no. I’ve never made a serious attempt. I don’t want to die.

Schizoaffective Disorder Makes Me a Survivor

My point is the stuff of folk wisdom: if you always expect the worst, you’re never disappointed. So, yeah, I’m a glass-is-half-empty kind of gal. But being that way is armor. As devastated as I was – and still am – about my friends’ deaths, I knew how to get through the situation with my life intact. I’m a survivor. And, like it or not, having schizoaffective disorder and general anxiety disorder has made me that way.

My Video about Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder and Grieving

Photo by Elizabeth Caudy.

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