GUEST BLOG POST: Emily O'Brien
Back on the mental health awareness train everyone! This week on Sickboy Podcast, we shoot the shit with a super cool gal named Emily. She had us in stitches and we learned a lot from her discussion about her experience with psychosis! Check out her blog post below, and as always you can listen to her episode over on the iTunes Store!
Hey, my name is Emily O’Brien and I have experienced episodes of psychosis. Now, you may be thinking “WOAH RED ALERT THIS CHICK’S PSYCHOTIC!!” ANNNND you would be incorrect. I am not a serial killer, I do not hear voices (nor have I ever) and I was never confined to a straight jacket.
Twice in my life I have experienced psychosis, but what is psychosis even really??? Well let me put it in a way most people will be able to understand. Were you ever dreaming and it was pretty weird but pleasant? Then the dream just shifts into a nightmare and you’re like YOO WHATS HAPPENING?? You don’t realize your dreaming and you stuck in this scary place where there’s ghosts all around and they won’t leave you alone. Imagine you NEVER wake up…. Sleep isn’t even an option at night because you’re too terrified of what’s happening in the dark, you wait until the sun rises to get your 4 hours of rest because that’s all your body will allow. Some pretty scary shit right? Now this isn’t how everyone experiences it, this was just my reality at the time. Some people do hear voices, some people see ghosts and/or other trippy hallucinations and some people feel bugs crawling on them.
This terrible reality lasted probably around 4 months, very slowly it started to fade away, I’m lucky I was able to eventually come out of it. I probably wasn’t back to my old self until a year after. I started getting help from the best mental health doctor I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. When I decided medication wasn’t helping, she led me through other ways of coping. It was slow going, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t go to school and hanging out with people in public spaces was extremely nerve wracking. But I stuck with it, because when you get people to accept you and want to hang, even if you’re a little off kilter, it helps the healing processes tremendously. You realize who your real friends are. I think the biggest help of all was my mother. She kept me grounded, was never afraid of what was happening, she never tried to force me to do or take anything I wasn’t interested in. It’s because of her and my doctor (and perhaps a little resilience on my part) that I’ve been healthy and happy for some time now. I think it’s accurate to say I’ve never felt better mentally. Now I’m back in school and I plan to use this insight I have on mental illness to work in the field someday in the future, so I can be a doctor who makes a difference in a person’s life.
If you notice weird shit happening, don’t try to explain it away, go talk to someone and see if they share that experience or if it’s happening in your own reality.
If you’d like to donate or get involved with mental illness, check out the link below,Stay classy you beautiful bastards,
Emily