Schizophrenia As I Live It (audio)
I discuss navigating the labyrinth of paranoid schizophrenia as a personal and Informative journey.
I'm Diana Dirkby, and I'm living with paranoid schizophrenia. In this podcast, I'll open up about my experiences with this complex brain disorder while also providing a comprehensive overview of schizophrenia itself. Despite sharing common symptoms, each individual's journey with schizophrenia is unique. We all seek tools and strategies to manage our symptoms within the context of our unique lives.
As mental health consumers, we are responsible for sharing our experiences openly and honestly. By doing so, we can help combat the stigma associated with schizophrenia. We can empower listeners to understand what psychosis truly feels like, dispelling the fear and misconceptions that often surround it. While a schizophrenic episode can be an intense and overwhelming experience, it's important to remember that the person experiencing it is usually not a threat to others.
Beyond my experiences with schizophrenia, I'll also share aspects of my life that transcend my mental health condition. This serves as a reminder that mental health consumers are multifaceted individuals, not defined solely by their diagnoses.
My fiction novel, "The Overlife: A Tale of Schizophrenia," is based on a deeply personal exploration of my own experiences and those of my mother. It's available as a Kindle and paperback book (visit https://www.amazon.com/author/diana_dirkby or search for "Diana Dirkby" on Amazon). An audiobook version will be released soon. For more information, please visit my website: https://overliveschizophrenia.com/.
Part 1 of this podcast aired during the prepublication phase of my novel. Now the book has appeared, Part 2 assumes you have access to it. You can still follow along without having read it. However, reading the book will help you understand and appreciate my podcast.
Together, we can break down barriers and promote open conversations about mental health. Thank you for joining me on this journey.
#schizophrenia #psychosis #schizoaffective #caregiver #schizophreniaawareness #schizophreniarecovery #schizophreniasupport #schizophreniatreatment #schizophreniahelp #schizophreniamanagement #brainhealthadvocate #brainhealthsupport #brainhealthisimportant #brainhealthawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #mentalhealthadvocate #mentalhealthsupport #mentalhealthrecovery #mentalhealthsupport #mentalillnesstreatment #mentalhealthmanagement #family #relationships #motherdaughter #daughtermother #fiction #fightthestigmaofmentalillness #fightthestigma
Schizophrenia As I Live It (audio)
A mental illness does not define you, a theme of my thriller horror novel.
Imagine grappling with the shadows of your mind while being the only beacon of light for a terror-stricken town. This episode unveils the eerie and myth-laden world of my upcoming thriller horror novel, "Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies." The tale promises to bind you with its suspense as academic and classicist Isabel Morse, who navigates life with paranoid schizophrenia, becomes the unexpected hope in a small East Texas community plagued by the nightmarish abduction of three teenagers.
The conversation transcends mere storytelling to showcase the potency of human resilience. As I share with you, the listener, it becomes evident that life's richness goes beyond the confines of schizophrenia or any other challenge. The essence of this episode lies in the portrayal of Isabel not just as a character managing schizophrenia but as an individual whose expertise in Greek mythology becomes crucial in a high-stakes game set by the kidnappers. Be prepared to be enthralled by a narrative that honors the depth of human experience and the struggle against the darkness that seeks to define us.
#schizophrenia #kidnapping #sibling #greekmyths #siblingabuse #families #familyrelationships #thriller #horror
Pastime With Good Company by King Henry VIII, played by The Chestnut Brass Company
Pastime With Good Company, composed by King Henry VIII, played by The Chestnut Brass Company
Hello, my name is Diana Dirkby and I live with Poundwood Schizophrenia. You are listening to my podcast Schizophrenia as I Live it. Today I want to talk to you a little bit about my forthcoming novel, which is entitled Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies," and which will appear later this year. It's a novel in the thriller horror genre and I'll explain a little bit later on why I chose that genre for the novel. What I wanted to mention first is that there is one character in the novel called Isabel Morse, who is 35 years of age, who lives with paranoid schizophrenia. In the novel, she is managing her Schizophrenia very well and has been in a good place with it for some time. However, she still is the target of stigma from certain people in the town where she lives. It's a town of 5,000 people and she relies very, very much on her best friend, who is a Catholic priest, called Father Lewis, who she sees once a week to talk about whatever may be worrying her in her interaction with the town society as a whole. She is gifted. She is an academic who specializes in the classics. She works from home for an online university writing content and correcting exams for subjects concerning the classics the thing that she likes the most. Her big passion are the Greek myths, and she is the go-to person for many people when it comes to the Greek myths. Now, what I've said so far is all we see of Isabel Morse's schizophrenia.
Diana Dirkby:As you know, I have published a book, "the Overlife a Tale of Schizophrenia," where chizophrenia, and a very full description of what it's like to have a deep relapse of schizophrenia, was covered. But I didn't want to do this in the second novel because I wanted to stress the fact that, even when you live with a mental illness, you are also lots of other things that aren't your mental illness. I mean, you have interests, you have passions, you have friends, you have stories to tell that have nothing to do with your mental illness. Now, what is rather confusing for people, I know in my case, is that when I do have a relapse, the relapse is pretty all-enveloping, so it takes up all my effort, it takes up my thoughts, it affects my interaction with people, and my method by now is to lay extremely low with my wonderful spouse and to get to work with my doctors in order to manage whatever is going on. But once I'm managing the schizophrenia well, which is currently the situation, for example, there are many things in my life I besides it. I'm not just someone living with schizophrenia who has these relapses which are really terrible, and then I get over them, but that's really all there is to me. Unfortunately, stigma will do that. I mean people who are already prejudiced about mental illness, from what they see in the media most often, or what they've read, or from having known someone living with a mental illness, they're inclined to think of you as always sick. Now, of course, I always have schizophrenia, whether I'm doing well or whether I'm doing badly. But I'm not just sick, I'm also a person with many, many interests and many friends and an interesting history that has nothing to do with schizophrenia.
Diana Dirkby:Isabel Morse's role in the novel is to be the authority on the Greek myths. Now the novel starts with the kidnapping of three teenage children from three different families in a town of about 5,000 people that I've set in East Texas, and this is kind of like the first horror. But it gets much, much worse and the story quickly evolves into a horror story because of what the kidnappers say they are doing to the kidnapped teens, and then it moves on to the thriller horror genre in that the thriller part is you know, you can stop this horror if you work out the thriller part. So at some point the kidnappers have given off clues as to what the thriller is that you have to solve, and that thriller involves the Greek myths. The only person in the town who is competent to talk about the Greek myths is Isabel Morse, and she therefore becomes a very important part of solving the thriller part of the novel and getting these kidnapped children home.
Diana Dirkby:Sibling abuse is featured as the pivot around which everything turns. T hat's the three siblings part of the title. I don't want to divulge too much right now because it's part of the thriller aspect, but it's by far the most important topic in the novel. So it's a novel about sibling abuse with a twist in that the sibling abuse is not just approached using our reality but it's approached using an alternate reality that is familiar to people who know the Greek myths. People who've lived in that world are better able to understand the mystery than people who have had no contact with the Greek myths, and so Isabel Morse is very important and she, early on, identifies the Three Furies from the Greek myths as being somehow part of it all, part of the kidnapping process and guesses sibling abuse is involved . The three furies are relevant because in Greek mythology they often punish wrongdoing within families. They punish wrongdoing in general, but what they're especially passionate about punishing wrongdoing within families, and this problem of sibling abuse is so bad that it's only through horror and thriller that is finally outed in these families of the kidnapped children. These families finally have to confront the fact that sibling abuse has occurred in their family.
Diana Dirkby:It was a challenge to write. I mainly know about sibling abuse through friends who have been through it and have told me a lot about it. So I had to make sure that I read many other accounts written by people who have been through sibling abuse. I knew something about the Greek myths, but I did a lot of background reading on the Greek myths to make sure I was getting it right. Now, the Greek myths, you know it was originally an oral tradition and they're very old, so every myth has several versions and more than several interpretations, which is fine because, again, this is a fiction book, not a nonfiction book, and it's not a text on the Greek myths. But I did want to get it right. I had to research a little bit about what happens when children get kidnapped, how do the police react, how does the FBI react and so on.
Diana Dirkby:I'm very excited about having this character who lives with schizophrenia but who is so crucial through her life's passion, which is the Greek myths. That has nothing to do with her mental illness, and I'm appalled by sibling abuse. I'm very pleased to have found what I think is an original way to feature it in a fiction novel where the right thing ends up being done, minus a couple of characters. There's a couple of characters in one family who will not admit that abuse occurred, but by then the abused children have support from the outside, and one of the people who is supporting them is Isabelle Morse. So she is important in many, many ways.
Diana Dirkby:Her best friend is a Catholic priest, Father Lewis, and she knows a lot about Catholicism because she's interested in beliefs as well as being interested in the classics. The Catholic priest does a very good job of going along with Isabelle Morse's train of thinking, even though he's Catholic and he believes in another belief system. For him it's not the three Furies who are of any importance, but the Holy Trinity. He does a wonderful job of putting to one side what he lives for essentially, which is a Catholic faith, and letting the Greek myths take over at the relevant point. And so I wanted to have a character like that in the novel, to bring home that, if you have a really bad problem and you can't solve it by thinking about how everybody else thinks about it, you may have to find a unique way to think about it. What is important is to talk about it, to find someone you trust, to find someone who will give you a voice. And in all the three cases of sibling abuse treated in the novel so they're, roughly speaking, physical, emotional and sexual the abused have no voice outside the family until the involvement of the Three Furies from the Greek Myths .
Diana Dirkby:I don't want to say too much because I don't want to spoil the plot. It is, after all, a thriller horror, so I don't want it to be that I tell you the whole story. I assure you I've left a great deal out. I am excited about this character, Isabel Morse, living with schizophrenia and contributing, so importantly, to the plot of the novel through what is not schizophrenia but her life's passion the Greek myths. I'm pleased that she's there with everybody else trying to figure out how to stop the horror.
Diana Dirkby:That's all I have to say today and, as always, I thank you for listening and I hope that you will give thought, if you haven't already, to looking at my book "he Overlife, a Tale of Schizophrenia. And don't forget, it has a website overliveschizophrenia. com. Now the website has a number of different pages. I've reorganized it somewhat so the blog and the podcast are no longer on the homepage, they have their own separate pages. I have a blog I write about once a week and this podcast I try to do once a week, but I think it's longer since I did the last one, so it doesn't always work out Okay. So, wherever you are, whoever you are, thank you for listening and please check in for my next podcast. Thank you so much, bye-bye.