This week has been much, much better symptom wise for me.

I’ve been able to flow smoothly today.

Awaiting the ebb, but not holding my breath.

My psychotic and depression symptoms have been few the past couple of days.

On Tuesday I got my Invega injection, so these symptoms will fade again for a week or two.

If I’m lucky, 3 weeks without a major hallucination.

(That I know of – it’s hard for me to know what’s a hallucination all the time though.)

They’re still there, all of it is.

I guess they’re just a touch more tolerable.

A touch dulled.

But even through the calmer days I still hear voices here and there.

They’re pretty quiet today.

Oh, but then there’s stressful situations.

Just, stress.

Any kind in any shape or form, big or small.

(Which, in this life, how is one to remain unstressed even by the tiniest things (They all add up.))?

My hallucinations and delusions feed off of stress.

Stressors encourage my mental illness symptoms in all ways to be enlarged and heavily breathing.

Because my symptoms don’t care where the stress comes from, it is just stress – and they fucking love it.

They gobble it all up, and spit out that shit that I have to then deal with, like hallucinations.

The stress my cold gave me the other week showed up as symptoms of voices and other auditory hallucinations.

I even had a couple of shadows throughout the two weeks I was down.

And I was just barely stressed about it.

But my voices kicked up pretty significantly while I was in the grip of it.

And delusions were following suit.

I think the Prozac is starting to hold its own and work because I feel more collected.

I feel like my hallucinations are mostly recognizable due to repetition of my voices.

The subject matter.

Though – they’re not adhered to that at all.

And they faded a bit as I got better.

Only to come back seemingly whenever they want.

I don’t think that I consciously notice when I’m stressed out though sometimes.

Not when the stress is minimal.

It feels like frustration, or being annoyed at nothing yet everything all at once.

But it’s stress.

I know that I can feel stress to a certain point of its intensity.

It gets so light at times, or feels different, and at a certain point I don’t think it registers as stress, it’s just life.

It just is.

So I guess, my voices and other hallucinations just are too.

Which sucks.

But that amount of stress, that frustration stress, will trigger my symptoms absolutely, 100%, every time.

Regardless of how slight the stress is, my hallucinations will pop up stronger.

My depression tends to grip me when it gets to that point.

And then it’s time for the delusions layered with more hallucinations.

And that’s a pattern I can see and feel.

But the hallucinations and delusions do creep up seemingly randomly too.

But is that just because I misinterpreted the stress as something else?

Because stress isn’t a straight forward feeling.

It can mutate and show up as something else, but at the bottom of it, it’s all stress.

Stress itself shows up, apparently constantly for me.

As I’m sure it does with many other folks.

And its impact is beyond anything else known to me right now.

Stress is by far my number one trigger for symptoms.

And it doesn’t matter how small.

But the more stress, the bigger the hallucinations and delusions.

In my opinion, stress is the catalyst for so many things in my life.

When stress comes on, and I am able to notice it, I have to brace myself for psychotic symptoms.

But there are countless times I bet I am stressed, it just doesn’t register as a traditional stressor signal or whatever.

It sorta shows up as anxiety and hallucinations.

But, which came first?

And along with stress both from the initial source, and the stress from the hallucinations themselves, it all compounds and creates a pretty miserable time for me.

Like a little stress can create a giant ball of it if I’m not careful.

It’s important for me to stay cool and calm, even when I feel it all creeping up.

My psych NP boosted my antihistamine (for anxiety – they work quite well) a few months ago so I’ve been taking it three times a day now and it’s very, very helpful with trying to remain in a calm, mindful state.

It’s nice to have tools and a toolbox.

– Keren