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)
Tell Me A Story
In this episode, I explain why it has been so long since the previous episode. I then discuss the advantages I have found using the fiction genre in writing about mental illness and child abuse in my two novels, "The Overlife. A Tale of Schizophrenia" (www.amazon.com/dp/191685219X) and "Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DR9K6YMG).
#SameHere #Schizophrenia #SiblingAbuse #ChildAbuse #Family #Friends #MentalIllness
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 paranoid schizophrenia. You are listening to my podcast "Schizophrenia As I Live It." Today's episode is entitled "Tell me a story. Before I get into the podcast, let me apologise for the big gap between my last episode on January 13 and this one on March 26.
Diana Dirkby:I have often said that a mental health consumer is not defined by their mental illness. The proof is that I have been plagued for many months with an as-yet- unexplained infirmity that has nothing to do with schizophrenia, except that coping with it brought on a two-week schizophrenic relapse in February, which was cured by my medication, by resting and by my spouse's care. I corresponded with my doctor about it, so she knew about my progress. The non-schizophrenic infirmity consisted of a series of unexplained falls over many months, several of them quite severe enough to sprain joints and break bones. The worst to endure was a fractured vertebra in my upper back, which confined me to bed and painkillers. As I suffer from mild epilepsy, and after running some blood tests that showed the dosage of my epilepsy medicine was too low, my doctors doubled the dosage, postulating that epilepsy was causing the falls. This idea turned out to be catastrophic, as I started to have digestive problems. After two weeks when I couldn't digest anything, I returned to my regular dosage and my digestion bounced back quickly. I am too thin now, but I don't expect that to last, as I am already putting on weight steadily. I have had no more falls since the short schizophrenic episode in February. Of course, I am being extra careful where I put my feet.
Diana Dirkby:Now to my podcast. From my previous podcast, you will know that I recently published two books "The Overlife, a Tale of Schizophrenia," and Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies" ( Furies". Both books are fiction novels. Most books about mental illness, including the brain disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, are scientific books or memoirs, and the same can be said for books about child abuse. These books are primarily valuable educationally and help reduce ignorance, which is often the source of stigma. By contrast, there are many fictional TV shows and movies that cast the villain as someone with a mental illness, usually a psychotic disorder, and teach that we must fear such people, thereby adding to stigma some of its worst traits, especially fear of mental health consumers. There are some notable exceptions, like the movie "A Beautiful Mind about the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, who lived with schizophrenia, and the Apple TV series "The Crowded Room," inspired by the story of Billy Milligan, who lived with DID, dissociative identity disorder, once known as multiple personality disorder. In an earlier podcast episode I explained how schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder are not the same mental disorders, even though they are often confused. Then there is the recent movie by Nadine Crocker, "Contnu, which treats suicide. These pioneering movies and TV series that get it right are welcome in a movie library that mostly gets it wrong. Most people don't get to make movies, but they do get a chance to express themselves through writing, whether it's a greeting card, an email, a blog or, more ambitiously, a poem or a book.
Diana Dirkby:The underused fiction genre in writings about mental illness has many advantages. Your fiction book can contain as many facts as you care to put into it, as long as you write well enough to tell the reader what is fact and what is fiction. One significant advantage I found was that, unlike memoir, I could leave out many people who exist in my real life but who have no place in my book or didn't want to have a place in my book due to the stigma of mental illness. Unfortunately, the excluded people include members of my family and my spouse's family who I always treated well and who didn't miss out on anything because of my schizophrenia. It's the word "schizophrenia" they can't cope with, especially if they fear you will one day turn up on their doorstep with your mental health problems, something I would never do. The excluded people also include work colleagues who I had known for many years without mentioning my schizophrenia. Once they witnessed symptoms of my relapses, they didn't want to know me, even if I recovered well and caused no harm to anyone.
Diana Dirkby:Like Sarah in my book "The Overlife A Tale of Schizophrenia," some overreacting people called the police on me, only to be told by the police that they were, indeed, overreacting.
Diana Dirkby:Tragically, not all encounters with law enforcement go well for the mentally ill. This awful situation is one of the main preoccupations of many mental health advocacy groups and they are right to fight. To a more stressless advantage of fiction. You can get all your facts across and tell a good story simultaneously. It's like putting a pill that tastes strange inside peanut butter, honey or anything else whose taste you like. You can deal with a serious topic, which is exhausting for the author and reader, and still have fun with human interest tales. I know my books will have a more challenging time getting recognized because they are fiction, whereas people are looking for books on mental illness and child abuse containing only facts, but that's a choice I consciously made. As the brilliant writer Walter Mosley, author of "Devil in a Blue Dress," said in his course on the Masterclass app, and here I don't have the exact quote, but he said words to the effect of: "no matter what you write, tell me a story. Thank you for listening.