Schizophrenia As I Live It (audio)

Harnessing Harmony: Prioritizing at a Stressful Time

• Diana Dirkby

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Discover the often-hidden signals that herald the onset of stress as I continue to share my journey with paranoid schizophrenia in this podcast. I offer an intimate look at my techniques for managing anxiety, a well-known trigger for aggravated symptoms of mental illness. My account includes the physical manifestations of stress I experience, such as numbness in my tongue and lips, and the strategies I employ to regain equilibrium. Whether indulging in the comfort of movies or meticulously preparing for unavoidable commitments, my approach is relatable and actionable.

Navigating the demands of work and family life while coping with a mental health condition is a tightrope walk many can relate to. In this heartfelt discussion, I impart practical advice for dealing with stress in various settings, from the solitude of remote work to the bustling university-level research and teaching environment. I emphasize the importance of preparation, self-awareness, and clear communication with colleagues and loved ones. I hope listeners will find solace and guidance in this podcast episode, understanding that there are effective ways to maintain well-being and functionality even amidst challenges.

#mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #mentalhealthawareness #schizophrenia #paranoidschizophrenia #schizoaffective #mentalillness #psychosis #depressionsawareness #fictionwriting #family #relationships #nomorestigma #fightthestigmaofmentalillness #letstalk #lookafteryourself #schizophreniaawareness #mentalillnessrecovery #mentalillnesstreatment #motherdaughter #brainhealth

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

Diana Dirkby:

Hello, my name is Diana Dirkby and I live with paranoid schizophrenia. You are listening to my podcast Schizophrenia as I Live it. Today, I wanted to talk about stress and how to manage it. In my case, and this is true for many people who live with schizophrenia, stress is a trigger for my symptoms getting worse. Therefore, I have to be very careful how I manage stress. I had such a conflict just the other day. I had slept badly and through no fault of my own, and through no fault of anybody really, there were a number of stresses that had built up over about a week or so, and I had a day when my stress was really pronounced. One of the things you have to recognize is how do you feel when you are beginning to get stressed over what is healthy? In my case, my tongue goes numb and my lips go numb. After my tongue goes numb and my lips go numb, I then don't feel them at all as the stress gets worse. This is a very physical and easy way for me to recognize stress.

Diana Dirkby:

Now, in my case, I work completely from home, and my husband also, so I'm in the privileged position of being able to mould my behaviour at home around stress when it occurs. Many of you, I realize, are not in that position. You have jobs outside the home, or you have a children to care for, and it simply may be very, very difficult to switch off. In my case, I have learned that the best thing to do when I feel so stressed that I begin to feel the paranoia and other symptoms of schizophrenia is simply to stop. I have to stop. So I have to ensure that whatever I do that day to be zero demanding on me and to be something that I enjoy doing. So the other day, when I had my stressful day, I binge watched movies, because I love movies and it doesn't involve me doing anything but flicking a switch and watching the movie, and my husband, who by now knows me very well, was kind enough to be in the same room as me watching the same movies.

Diana Dirkby:

However, I wasn't always in this position. I worked for a long time in mathematical research, which involved showing up, for example, to teach or to be involved in a seminar, whether it's a seminar I was giving or a seminar I was expected to listen to, and stopping altogether simply wasn't an option. So what I learned to do on these stressful days was to take a back seat, and If I couldn't, to prepare well. If I was to give a talk, say, if I had to give a seminar, obviously I was to the forefront and you can't take a back seat if you're giving a seminar. But what you can do is make sure that you're very prepared and you have notes and you have probably slides that you can show with a projector or from your laptop. That meant that everything was prepared in advance. So all I had to really do was to read what I had prepared. If I was in the audience of a seminar and I was going through a period of bad stress then I learned just to not participate in the back and forth during the seminar and questions after the seminar, but simply to let other people do that. Now, the days that I was teaching a class it was similar to when I was giving a seminar. I always made sure that I was very prepared so that if I was having a stressful day, I could get away with just giving the class by reading the well-prepared notes that I had.

Diana Dirkby:

So again, this situation is not possible for many of you, and I know that you have to get through days where you are very stressed and you still have to perform at a less flexible job and you still have to perform for your family. Now, if you have someone at work who is sympathetic, then I would advise you to simply tell them that you're having a bad day and that you do your best at your job, but you really need to manage the stress you're having. You don't need to mention mental illness, but you could say that you're very stressed and you need to manage it today, and could you bear that in mind please. With your family, you can be more open. So presumably your family, at least the family that you're living with, knows that you live with a mental illness - in the case of schizophrenia it's a severe mental illness - and that it can be triggered by stress. So you have to find some way to communicate with them and say this is a stress day, I need to be as low-key as possible, I need to rest as much as possible. I really need you guys, as my family, to step up and support me today. Or if the stressful period lasts for longer than one day, then of course, you'll say you know it's going to be a few days that I'm not going to be at my best. So if it's at all possible and you feel that the symptoms of schizophrenia are kind of coming in because of some stressful events or maybe some shock that you've received, find out whether it's possible actually to take a sick day or two from work so that you can stay at home and just deal with what you're going through. Now that's going to depend on your job and it's going to depend on your boss, and I know that that is possible in the job I had as a researcher in mathematics and as a university professor, but I know it's not possible for everybody.

Diana Dirkby:

I am very goal-oriented, which often works against healthy behavior for my schizophrenia, because I have always in my mind things that I must do, things that I want to do, and I get depressed if I don't achieve those goals. Very goal-oriented. I think I inherited that from my father who was the same, you know very goal-oriented and if he didn't get done what he had planned to do in any one day he stressed himself. So I'm like that now. He didn't live with a mental illness, but I do. So I cannot afford to indulge such behavior. Therefore what I do when there are goals coming up, is I prioritize. I make a list (and I think I've spoken about this before) of what is the most urgent, then what is the second most urgent, the third most urgent, and so on. So I don't take on everything all at once, but I simply work through the tasks that I have to do based on when the deadline is. For example, at the moment it's the end of March and I haven't finished my income taxes, so I have a couple more weeks before the deadline for taxes. My number one priority right now is to get my taxes done.

Diana Dirkby:

I am working with the proofs of my next book, and that's priority number two. And the good thing about that also is that it's an activity I enjoy. So it's kind of neutral ground, it's not stressful, but yet it's something that I dearly want to advance, because I need to read the proofs and get all the corrections done in order for the project to keep going. And then, of course, there's what my spouse needs. Now I don't want you to think that I put my spouse as the third most important thing in my day. He's actually the first most important thing in my day, but he's very, very understanding, so he'll take the third most important thing in my day if he realizes I'm under stress and I need support.

Diana Dirkby:

Whether you're living with family or you're living with someone that you love you simply must have the discussion about what triggers a relapse of your mental illness so, in my case, schizophrenia and what you need to do if things are happening too much at once or you're getting stressed or whatever it is that triggers your mental illness. You need to have an honest conversation with the people you are living with so that they can help you. It took me a long time to have that conversation with my spouse. I mean, I wanted him to think of me as someone who could do anything and was always cheerful and so on and so forth, but that only got me a certain distance and after he'd witnessed my schizophrenia symptoms, he knew that I needed to tell him a lot more and that we needed to work on prioritizing my mental health.

Diana Dirkby:

So you know, whether it's you want to make money or you want to absolutely get in touch with everybody you know on social media or whatever it is. That kind of is a good day for you, but you're under stress and you feel your mental illness creeping in. Just try to cut out what isn't necessary. So you know, I have periods where I don't even go on social media if I feel that I'm stressed and I'm not going to be able to give to social media the image of myself that I want out there. And also I'm going to be stressed because it's one thing I'm piling on top of other things I need to do.

Diana Dirkby:

So you don't need to be on your smartphone and you don't need to be at your computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which I know is hard for some people, because our day-to-day life has become more and more a question of what you see on a screen, and phones and laptops and worrying about social media or worrying about the news. These are all things that take up a tremendous amount of energy and they're probably the first thing that you can put to one side if you're under stress. You don't need to be in touch with every single friend you have on social media every day. Now, when I was growing up, it was before even email, and I would go to school. I had a handful of best friends and then I would see them at the end of school and then I wouldn't see them until the morning after and we'd catch up on what had happened overnight. There really isn't a necessity to be updated minute by minute as to what people are doing. Same with the news, same with the stock market, same with whatever it is that you've got going on.

Diana Dirkby:

Now, you know, I've been quite open about the fact that I'm in a rather privileged position when it comes to managing stress, but even so, I have often failed to manage it and got into a lot of trouble with my schizophrenia for that reason. However, I recognize that it may be more difficult for some of you out there to leave things to one side and just manage how you feel. But try to be creative, try to have a strategy that you will adopt if you're in a situation which is bad for your mental health, and don't be afraid to share about it. I mean, there's a lot of stigma against mental illness. I mean, there's a lot of stigma against mental illness, but I think people, even when they don't really understand what mental illness is, if you give them something straightforward that they can do to help you feel better, if they're a nice person, they'll probably want to do that. If they like you, they'll probably want to do that, even if they don't understand fully what you're going through.

Diana Dirkby:

So, anyway, in my case, I managed this day or two of stress. Some of the events causing the stress are still going on, so I am being incredibly easy on myself at the moment. Some of the deadlines have been pushed to later. I've made lists of what I should do first, second, third, fourth and so on, so that I'm not trying to achieve all the goals all at once, and I'm on the lookout for stress and coping with it with the techniques I briefly described to you, which are deeply personal.

Diana Dirkby:

For those of you who are listening to this, you've got to deal with your personal situation when it comes to stress and when it comes to whatever makes your mental illness worse. But there are people out there who will help you. I mean, the mental health advocacy groups have support groups that meet weekly and you can go to those and get a lot of support. If you're on social media, you can look for people talking about mental illness and stress rather than talking about subjects that may stress you, for example, politics or the economy or whatever it is that gets your blood boiling. Just try to make a nice environment for yourself on the way to somewhere stronger. When you're stronger, when you've managed the stress, you've made some progress with your goals, and so on and so forth, then you can take on some of the more stressful things that you may be passionate about, like politics and the economy and civil rights. They will wait for you and you can come back to them when you're feeling stronger.

Diana Dirkby:

So here I am and I've had some stressful days since I last spoke to you, but I've come through them and I've done less than I had envisaged doing in the last week or so, but my schizophrenia is doing well and I'm managing it well, so I consider it's worth it. So thank you very much for listening and, as I always say, please consider looking at my book the Overlife A Tale of Schizophrenia. You can find it on Amazon if you search by my pen name, Diana Dirkby, and you can find information about it on my website, overliveschizophrenia. com. So thank you very much for listening. I hope you would tune in next time. Have a great day, have a happy day and just give a few people you love a hug. That will really help. Okay, bye-bye for now.