My mother inspires me. Don't get me wrong -- both of my parents are great. They have both been very supportive of me my whole life, including during my first and only psychotic break and my diagnosis of schizophrenia and then schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. But in this article, I am going to focus on how my mother inspires me.

As I’ve confided before, one of the most debilitating symptoms of my schizoaffective disorder is that I hear voices. I’ve been hearing them a lot more often lately. I’ve been hearing them so often that I called my psychopharmacologist to raise the dosage of my antipsychotic medication. That helped a little bit, but I’m still hearing them more often than I’d like to. Here’s how I’m dealing with these schizoaffective voices.

Even though March is a hard time of year for my schizoaffective disorder, I am focusing on learning to love myself. Besides, I also tend to benefit from taking on new projects. After all, it is seven years ago this March that I quit smoking. So, this spring, I’m taking on the project of self-compassion. And learning to love myself is proving to be more difficult than I first thought it would be.

My current lack of exercise is hurting my mental health. As I write this, it’s the end of February with no end in sight to a particularly brutal Chicago winter. We’ve been pummeled with snowstorms and numbing cold almost daily. I know I need to get outside and walk or do some kind of exercise, but when I look outside at the l drab and gray landscape and the snow keeps falling from the thick blanket of clouds over the sky, I just can’t find the motivation. And this lack of exercise is having a very negative impact on my mental health.

My Uncle Carl died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 81 on January 24. Everyone in the immediate family called him Buddy—so to me, he was Uncle Buddy. He was my mom’s brother. I loved him very much, and we had something very important in common—we both had schizoaffective disorder, and we're both more than our schizoaffective disorder.

My schizoaffective anxiety makes me overthink simple tasks. I mean everything. And “overthink” is an understatement. I obsess about the worst case scenario of almost all the things I do—washing my hair, doing the laundry, and driving in the rain are all this way. This is called “catastrophizing.” My mind makes a catastrophe out of the simplest plans and tasks. It’s very hard to live this way.

Sometimes, I expect myself to just snap out of it: it being my schizoaffective anxiety. This is problematic for several reasons. First, it reeks of self-stigma—to the point where I would say it is a form of self-stigma. What’s even worse, it can block me from doing the necessary hard work in therapy to get better.

Now that the holidays are over, I can sit back and congratulate myself on a job well done. I got through the holidays with lots of joy—and without having a meltdown. That can be hard for anyone, not just someone like me with schizoaffective disorder. I know the holidays are supposed to be the happiest time of the year, but all this pressure to be worry-free is one of the reasons the holidays can be so stressful, along with shopping, planning, and social commitments. Here’s how this schizoaffective got through the holidays without having a major freak-out.

The intensity of my anxiety has me on a roller coaster. After a flare-up of my schizoaffective anxiety in September and October, my symptoms became really manageable again in November. I felt great. But then, when December came around, I started reeling in anxiety again. I’m not sure why I felt so good in November, or why my schizoaffective anxiety flared up again just in time for the holidays. But I have some ideas about why the intensity of my anxiety keeps changing.

I don’t go to parties, as I have confided before. This is especially hard to pull off during the holiday season. I used to party when I was younger, but now I have less of a tolerance for the noise and confusion. Here’s why this schizoaffective avoids the holiday mayhem.