My name is Jennifer and I am a recovered mental illness survivor—

            I have endured severe mental illness for over half my life.  During that time, I suffered from clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and borderline personality disorder.

            Due to the depression, my behaviors ranged from excessive crying to excessive sleeping to suicide attempts.  I felt feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness.  All I thought I wanted to do was die.   But in fact, what I really wanted was help with overcoming my severe sadness.

            During my manic states, I endured impulsive, spontaneous, and irresponsible behaviors.  I felt on top of world.  I felt excessive amounts of energy.  I had racing thoughts.  I had delusions of grandeur.  I’ll be honest.  It felt great to be so high, but it is also very dangerous.  Risky behaviors can lead to much endangerment of self and others.

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Mental illness has been a part of my life for the past 30 years.  There have been many ups and downs.  There have been times I was hopeless and wanted to die.  Mental illness has even consumed my life at times.  Even so, mental illness does not define me.  I am more than schizoaffective disorder, depression, and bipolar 2.  I am not ashamed to have these disorders.  But I am also more than a label.  I am a unique person who happens to have a mental illness.  I do, however, understand that these labels are important, since they are used in giving the doctors direction in the best treatment for me. 

Having a mental illness has been the worst and best thing to happen to me.  It has been the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with.  It has disrupted my life.  It has caused much pain for me and my family.  And it has moved me to the point of almost taking my own life.  Yet, having a mental illness has taught me many things about myself and about life.  I have learned that joy can be found in the simplest of things.  Every day is a day to start over and begin again.  I have seen more love and compassion from family and friends than I may have never seen otherwise.  I am more capable than I would have ever imagined to stand up to the hardest of life’s challenges.   Perseverance has become my friend.  And faith leads to healing for mind, body, and soul.

This thing we call life throws things at us sometimes that can overwhelm us and push us to our limit.  It dangles hope in front of us sometimes, only to jerk it away in an instant.  And just at the moment we think we have it figured out along comes a curve ball in the form of unforeseen relapses and occasional hospitalizations.  Mental illness has robbed me of many years of productivity and happiness.  But it has also led me to where I am today.  And that is a good place.  It is a place that I never dreamed I would be.  I am blessed with a wife who loves and understands me and a son who loves me unconditionally.  I have a sense of purpose and a desire to help others who are living with a mental illness. 

Yes, having a mental illness takes away so much from people.  However, learning to live life with a mental illness can give a new sense of meaning and purpose.  Finding this meaning and purpose is a process that takes time and patience.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.  And discovering meaning in the pain of mental illness won’t come overnight. 

I believe that real meaning in life can be found in the quality, not quantity, of life that we have.  Because, of the treatment I have received and the help of many caring people I am able to experience the quality of life that escaped me for many, many years.  Now, I am convinced there is a purpose for my pain.  My life has meaning.  And, hope, is a common word in my vocabulary.  There is hope.  There is always hope.  Mental illness does not define me.  It is not who I am.  It is something I am learning to live with and overcome every day.  By the grace of God, my future is bright.  And I am determined to shine the light of hope on others who may also be living with a mental illness. 

Hello, I wanted to write to those attempting to understand mental illness. My name is Jori, I spent my entire life not knowing or understanding why most people didn’t see the things I saw or heard the things I heard so I always knew I was gifted and a chosen one in my mind. My mother was diagnosed with 8 personalities and my father had severe mental illness too which I am not sure was ever diagnosed but because of his alcohol and drug addictions, I am not sure if people assumed his addictions were the issue which was just a bandage for the real problems in his mind.

I first began to notice I had something wrong when I was about 14 and I would snap, once attacking my mother whom I hated and throwing her to the floor in attempt to kill her. I was removed from the home and lived with a family which I observed kindness and loving relationships which was my first opportunity to see things in the home I came from were not acceptable as far as neglect and verbal, mental and sexual abuse.

I never graduated from high school and had two children with two different fathers who abandoned me during my pregnancies, leaving me to care for my children as a single parent. I did not know that I was supposed to bath my children and my oldest got an infection and had to have a surgery on his penis which flared up from never being cleaned by the age of 3. My fear was keeping him safe and not abusing him. I also would give my children a cup of chocolate milk and a vitamin in the morning and send them off to school without a lunch. The school finally began giving my children the free lunch programs so they would have something to eat. I never learned to cook or do self care until I observed friends caring for themselves. Life was tough, life was lonely and the loneliness has never left me for some reason I hold a hatred for my parents still to this day and I am 48.

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What I’ve learned from having mental illness

1. Like everyone else, I am vulnerable. I cannot do anything on my own. Every moment I depend on God for giving me the health(mental and physical) to live at the moment. Knowing that you are vulnerable makes you grateful to God for giving you the moment, the health, and the strength to live.
2. Sacrificial Love. I have learned to love others even when it is difficult. When I’m at work and I show love and kindness to someone even when I feel bad, it is a sacrificial love that I’m showing. I may want to show frustration or go home but I try not to because of love for others. Jesus showed us the ultimate sacrificial love by giving his life on the cross. We like Jesus must show love by sacrifice, which may mean being by showing others love even when it is inconvenient. When we suffer, have pain, and make the choice not to get bitter and show love instead, we then have turned pain in to a sacrifice and a gift to give to God.
3. Dealing with pain. When we feel pain, we have a choice. We can either get bitter and pass that pain on to others by being unkind, or we can say “The pain stops with me.” We can add to the pain in the world or we can refuse to add to it.

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My name is Robert Hagee and I have a mental illness, I have had the illness since childhood, it was believed to be schizophrenia when I was young but came to schizoaffective disorder. If I was to write anything about my illness it would be this: that without my mother who was very strong from her life struggles as a child and as an adult, I would not have survived; I look back and realize if I was to know of all my issues and struggles to come when was a young and not to know of the good I do not believe I would have continued. There are other issues with my health and the hardest thing I face is that my mother will be at my funeral and my only regret I would ever change is the fact that my mother has had to experience my life with me.

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      During the late 1990’s I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.  Before this I was working full-time and attending college full-time but I was abusing marijuana and alcohol by using it to cope with the stress of doing too much.  My reality would become a distorted one for me because I started hearing voices, seeing images, and I believed I could communicate with people on television.  These were the symptoms i remember experiencing before my first breakdown.

      I was then arrested and felt lost in a world I had never been, on, a psychiatric unit at a local hospital.  This would become a place where I felt lost, disoriented, and unhappy.  By the time I was hospitalized the third time I had become  aware that I had been diagnosed with a mental illness.  I had stopped using alcohol but I started using marijuana again.  

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In August of 2019, I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and my doctor recommended exercise to treat it.  This all started in 2005, when I was diagnosed with a postpartum mental illness and treated with medications that have known metabolic side effects.   My diagnosis was later changed to Schizoaffective Disorder.  Every time I’ve been taken off medication, I’ve gotten sick again, so I need the mental health medication, even though it has side effects.

My work provides the benefit of points towards a gym membership. So, I joined the gym after I learned about my diagnosis. As part of joining my gym, I had a free consultation visit with a personal trainer. At the end of the visit, we sat down, and he took out his notepad.

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I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder seventeen years ago because I used and abused drugs and alcohol in excess.  Today I am clean and sober and I have written a book of poems that can inspire others to learn about substance abuse and having a mental Illness.  My book explores the dark side of drugging and drinking but it also explores healing and recovery.  

By: Steve Colori

When I was first diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder I had psychosis, neurosis, and I couldn’t speak an intelligible sentence never mind have a conversation. I had referential thinking, auditory hallucinations, mania, depression, OCD, and also a great deal of anxiety and paranoia. I had no friends, no job, no meaningful activities to participate in, and I had no social skills. Recovery is something I worked for and I feel I’ve advanced far beyond it. All these previous ailments are mostly experiences of the past and I am now close with my family, I have several great groups of friends, a girlfriend, a full-time job, and many meaningful and fun activities in my life. I deal with little to no symptoms of schizoaffective disorder in my day to day interactions.

During recovery there were times I wished things could go back to the way they were before episodes. The thought of reverting back to old practices seemed comforting because there was familiarity with it. Unfortunately, I learned I couldn’t just erase five years of schizoaffective disorder from my memory and do everything the same way I used to. I was forced to face and work through the many fears and issues from trauma and schizoaffective symptoms. I was initially uncertain of whether I could get through schizoaffective and for a while with the help of my doctor I was merely trying to identify unknown issues in my psyche and find resolutions for them. It was similar to fumbling for a light in the dark. It took some time but after finally seeing some improvement I began developing methods and ways to continually improve. I’ve found having short-lived habits (Nietzsche) has worked for me. I live within a certain comfort zone for a short while and work on self improvement through change thus finding a better comfort zone.

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