LAUSR

Throughout my lifetime I have experienced symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations, dissociations, and paranoia. At times, these symptoms have influenced my life in a very profound way. A lot of the times I did not realize the impact the symptoms had on me and the people that I cared most about. Later on in life, I discovered the ability to identify these symptoms of schizophrenia and I used them to label my own psychic processes vs me going to a medical doctor or psychiatrist and having them label and diagnose by authority. This ability to label and classify my own strains of symptoms led me to a new kind of empowerment. It led me to a very deep self-knowledge. I believe that it is within this self-knowledge that resides a hidden strength. To me, having the self-knowledge to identify my own symptomologies has led me to see schizophrenia in a different way. My personal context of schizophrenia is about self-identifying, which provides me the chance to modify my perceptions to match the outside world, and at the same time allowing my symptoms of schizophrenia to rise and fall without a full-on medical containment. In conclusion, for myself, I believe it is possible to have the illness of schizophrenia and being able to both self-identify and self-control symptoms so that my personal sometimes distorted perceptions can be recognized, contained, and then flipped around in order to be more socially in-tune with the current community culture communication.