illness is emptiness: against interpretation

it just comes to mind that i don't do much thinking about my illness, which is schizoaffective disorder. in fact i don't support any sort of interpretation of what i go through. i believe it to be empty, meaningless, and just a facet of my existence that is best left ignored. i've seen first hand what intensive analysis can do and how empty that turns out to be.

what i go through is not special, it's more of a malfunction. i don't believe in taking any advice without a grain of salt, and advice to me is only worthwhile when it pertains to what i'm going through in an immediate sense. lingering over "how can i become a more loving person?" or "how do i overcome my illness?", "how do i become this or that?" is just a way to frustrate yourself. attempting to create a new you is a game that leads nowhere. the only thing that matters is action. the only thing that matters is learning on the fly. running things over in your mind leads nowhere, and doesn't prepare us any better for when life actually goes down, hits the fan, hurts us, teaches us, finds us.

I'm not against deep or critical thinking, but i don't see the point of associating it with mental illnesses. i believe there is nothing to figure out. there is nothing to examine. it's just empty. that everything rich in life simply happens to us, and we've got to do our best to seize that moment. anything outside the moment is just stuff that doesn't prepare us for anything. i believe our illnesses have taken us away from life, and made us obsessed.

i suggest stop worrying about labels, symptoms, and mental illness altogether. find your person again. i suggest doing it by ignoring or stopping caring about any of it. i say it's all empty, that thought is our enemy, and we need to get back to what matters and that is dealing with life as it's thrown at you, in the moment, and get away from discussing mental illness, thinking about, trying to solve anything. there's nothing to solve. we have to move on.

I guess I have to agree. The more I think about depression and being depressed, the MORE depressed I get!

So unless I'm having a PARTICULARLY horrendous day, I prefer not to think about it at ALL. And even on horrendous days, I'd just rather sleep -- and forget about everything. Not the BEST way to deal with it, but oh well. LOL

Thanks for a good post! Hugs, Lee

SOME illnesses and consequent treatments might be better addressed depending on the severity of the illness and it's effects on the patient. Some degrees of various illnesses are just beyond what one can manage him or herself. Otherwise I'd say your method of dealing with things has an interesting approach. Just wondering have you been checking out the P-C member RonPSH and his Profound Self Help site? Sounds a little like his approach. You might be interested in it. Best wishes Bracken..take care and right on!

I think I've read your musings on this before and I find it very interesting; but a question occurs to me -- did you have to go through a period of self-examination in order to discover that examination and analysis are not helpful for you?!

I was the kind of a guy who sits for hours writing about what's going on in my head, always searching, and going deeper and deeper. I thought that I could solve the puzzle of psychosis. I wanted to write a book on the subject.

Now I know my recovery depends on staying out of my head, I also suspect it's my way of healing as well.

I think it was a sort of natural progression, and a slow realization that none of what I thought got me any closer to the life I wanted (just a normal life). I don't really know how to answer your question, or if i've answered it. I suspect that after a long period of trying to make sense of what I am going through I just gave up, because, maybe my last episode just helped me to see (a long with getting sober) that in my head nothing makes sense, and to try to make sense of it takes me to a place where I'm unstable again.

I say that illnesses are empty things, void of meaning, but not because learning about them has nothing to offer. The tools of recovery are important, even if they come down to just common sense. I just think the obsession part of it is what gets to people. Lives dominated by thinking about illnesses. Always conscious of illness, manifested in every interaction with people, and when you're alone.

It took reflection to get away from reflection, in some degree, but to really come to grasp that it took talking to other people, therapist and friends. None of what I write these days is the product of serious self reflection, or perhaps my idea of reflection is seriously schewed by the depth and detail to which I am accustomed.

Friends and people always felt I knew a lot of stuff, and was intelligent, but I didn't feel I was getting anywhere. So I stopped reading and writing, and got a job, and now I'm not totally well but I'm better today then even a year ago.

Def. on to something...glad it's working and hope things progress even more. i'm still in the musing stage but your post has given me fodder for thought...or less thought if one can look at it that way. keep on truckin' brackenbeard.

Oh I feel thinking about ourselves can be useful. Fear keep us living a life we may not really happy with. Though change and healing maybe desired it can be scary. I think if we hurt enough we will try anything.

I wanted to write a book, too! Maybe I still will. When I was first starting out, I wish I had found more books about psychosis that were not basically extended lists of all the different drugs one could take.

And I imagine I would be very interested to read a book by you, if you ever did write it.

That's my way to recovery, too. I'm just not very good at it!

No, you most certainly answered it! Thank you.

Hrm, that's interesting. For me, that was the most damaging part of psychiatry and being in mainstream mental health care. Everything was centred around the illness - how to interact with people when you have the illness, how to work when you have the illness, how to [insert daily activity here] when you have the illness. Every aspect of life, directed through this 'illness' paradigm. It was very destructive for me; demeaning and degrading.

I think there are two competing ways of looking at this --

One is the maxim 'know thyself' (gnothi seauton) most famously attributed to Socrates, but pretty common throughout the West.
Then there is the more Eastern idea that everything is transient and unfinished, and 'knowing' is impossible (or possible in a radically different way than we would 'know' something in the West). You don't aim for self-examination -- though that may be a preliminary phase -- you work to detach from yourself and join with something larger.

Probably there is a middle ground between the two

You have written what I too have come to realize, but find trouble verbalizing... It's as if all that focus on 'illness' (bipolar in my case) fed my malfunction, fuelled it, made it so much bigger than I at 1 point! Since I quit T, and meds, and since I quit looking at myself thru a magnifying glass, questioning my every experience and labelling them as symptoms I am MUCH healthier, it feels like I took back my power...
.
Ps. I still take very good care of myself, my tools are just not part of the medical model.

For me, there are choices. The Serenity Prayer is a great summary.