Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Managing Schizoaffective Disorder

For whatever it is worth, I just want to say that this disorder can be managed, or maybe overcome for good.

I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder in 2001 and never had a major relapse since. I do have some major stressful events that I thought I am about to crack, but I managed to control my illness.

I have been productive for over a decade now, most of it without any medication at all. I think the key "trick" is to know yourself and identify the things that would possibly trigger or lead to a relapse.

Listen to your body signals. My key indicator is that if I am not able to sleep for more than 5 days, I am likely to have relapse. So I try me best to do something about it.. I even try sleeping pills, as last resort.

It is challenging most of the time.. Specially on days when you get depressed and you don't find any reason at all to get depressed.

It is also hard to focus on any task, more specifically on my job as a home-based software developer. There are times when my mind is highly creative and it just feels like I can solve any software problem that comes my way. And then there are days, or even weeks and months, when I can't solve anything at all.

Well, what else can i say? That's life, for me