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644988 tn?1236364548

Losing sight of normality?

I've been thinking a lot this week and talked to some professionals and some friends and I'm confused. My "breakdown" was over a year ago and although I know I was as low as I could ever have been without taking the exit, and everyone who was involved at the time tells me how bad I was, it's beginning to fade from my memory. I've been pretty much down all year, whilst getting oh-so-slowly "better". I'm functioning more and doing more and piecing my life back together again. From the outside I can sometimes seem fairly "normal". A stranger who met me on a good day wouldn't look twice. I can go a whole day, even two without crying. Even on bad days I'm told I look and sound so much better. Yet to me I'm far from OK/normal. I journey through miles of recovery and others see the distance I have travelled and are pleased for me. The problem is that I can only see that the "finishing post" still looks just as far away as it did last time I looked.
I keep hoping that one day I'll see that light shining brightly at the end of the tunnel, but I'm so stuck in my negative head that that it seems yet unachievable.
I've been told that I won't be the same person when this is through; my therapist says not to try to get back to the "old me" but to think in terms of the "new me". How do you know when you get there? Will I feel positive? Will I know I've arrived, or might it be that this existence is as good as it gets- the "new me" is a weakened damaged version of the old?
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644988 tn?1236364548
Thanks, IL, that makes sense though acceptance is a single word which holds the key to an immense attitude/being/feeling thing that I struggle to find most of the time. Acceptance is a passive thing and I keep trying to fight/beat/control...all active; the passivity I struggle with  and it probably hampers my recovery most of the time. I'm sick of being told I'm too hard on myself...and yet somewhere deep inside I think it's the best thing I can hear in some ways cos at least it means I'm not taking it lying down.

Yesterday I gave myself a big talking to a decided to stop overanalysing everything...yet today I'm worse than ever.

Helpful - 0
585414 tn?1288941302
You are always the same person. You have a psychiatric disability now and you are in the process of recovery. There are a lot of factors in recovery, including how well a person responds to treatment and their issues in life in general. But its a matter of looking forward not looking back. As a person who has made a full recovery from schizoaffective disorder with a glycine, a glutamate antagonist which is a new form of antipsychotic in Phase II FDA study, I know I say to my friends who have not recovered as well yet with currently available treatment, who wish they could go back to their past years when they were "themselves" that as new medications become available they will have a fuller recovery rate and be happy with who they are now. But its more than just what treatment is available. Its a matter of self acceptance. As a person with advanced tardive dyskinesia, I am homebound and I advocate for treatments that will help me be otherwise but the imporant thing for me was when I would walk by a movie theater and not have an intense feeling of sadness because I physically will never be able to sit through a movie. I just thought about what the movies were and when they'd hit dvd.
  With depression feelings of doubt and being unsatisfied with who you are as a person are often part of being depressed. Its essential to realize that. And as for what recovery rate you make it depends but the important thing is not to be upset with what you can't do but maximize the things you still enjoy in life and then expand them from there. And you are always the same person regardless. Seek recovery but accept your disability as part of yourself as well.
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