I know now that stress plays a huge part in my psychotic symptoms.

I never realized how big of a role it carries.

My symptoms are dying down again after a few days of being pretty heavy and thick.

The paranoia is still there, but it’s leveling off.

I realized today that I have been very, very stressed about my thyroid medication this week.

My blood work is showing inconsistencies.

My medication for it is in the process of being changed to a name brand to fight off the instability with my thyroid levels.

The generic medication keeps changing manufacturers and my body is rejecting the constant fluctuations.

So I was switched to a name brand.

I had the follow up appointment with my primary care doctor on Monday this week.

It went really well and we talked about how bouncing back and forth between different manufacturers with a thyroid medication can absolutely create issues.

Which is curious.

Well, on Tuesday this week I had to call the pharmacy four times, message my doctor five times and call my health insurance company.

I was so stressed out that I started crying.

That night the voices got so bad I couldn’t take it.

I mean I did – I had to.

But it was very, very difficult.

They were thick and relentless.

Mimicking and commenting on everything I am saying or doing in my own home.

It’s truly maddening and engulfing.

And the little bit of stress over my thyroid levels and medication set me the fuck off.

Threw me off the cliff.

I’m amazed because after I got it figured out on Thursday afternoon, my symptoms have been slowly getting fainter again.

So, the question of the day is, how do I combat my stress levels so that they don’t affect my psychotic symptoms?

Well, I feel that it’s impossible to control when stress pops up.

The only thing I know is that my mental illness symptoms will get worse the more I stress about things.

Anything.

Any stress sets me off.

And that’s quite obvious now.

And stress is impossible to avoid.

I feel like it’s part of being human.

Part of the human condition.

And why it sets me off the rails so quickly is unknown to me.

It’s like it activates my psychosis though.

I didn’t get my thyroid medication picked up until this morning (it’s Friday) because the pharmacy had to order it once I finally got things straightened out with the prescription itself.

It took five days to fill.

And continuing to take a medication that isn’t helping me as much as it could this week was stressful within itself.

Let alone trying to figure out a name brand medication that’s actually affordable with my insurance.

It was a fucking nightmare.

No wonder why I got symptomatic at the start of all of it.

It’s hard enough having one ailment, let alone several like what I deal with.

The layers of bullshit are awful sometimes.

But I’m slowly realizing that stress reduction and avoidance is almost necessary for me.

I can’t believe how quickly my symptoms surfaced this week.

I didn’t change anything with my antipsychotics.

I have been taking them normally and consistently.

So when they started showing up, once I could think outside of my symptoms, I realized I was super stressed out.

My stress became more distant as things calmed down, and my hallucinations followed suit.

That’s a pretty wild realization.

I have known that stress amplifies my auditory hallucinations, but I wasn’t aware of how drastic of an influence it has until this week.

I was quite literally thrown into a short episode due to it.

And that’s a tough thing to know.

Because like I said, I feel like stress is unavoidable.

It’s part of being alive.

Even wild animals get stressed out and their behaviors change.

So how have I not really seen the connection till now?

It’s all about that clarity I talk about all the time.

Clarity is the ability to reflect and understand why I react and act the ways that I do.

Clarity is impossible while in psychosis.

Having psychotic symptoms creates a lifestyle of living only in the delusional present.

Hallucinations are reality.

There’s no ability to see outside of whatever it is being experienced.

It’s impossible to reflect. 

There’s no comfort in psychosis.

It’s unforgiving and full of the most complex conspiracies.

And stress is amplified just by having psychosis – being in it.

So the amplification happens continuously, in a seemingly endless loop of symptoms and stress. 

– Keren