Balancing Life and Schizoaffective Disorder

I’ve got to be honest, I haven’t quite figured this out. The balance between mental health and life is really hard. It takes carefully walking the line which has self care and mental health maintenance on one side and chores, family, school, work, and everything else on the other side. I usually end up focusing most of my energy on one of these and neglecting the others, and I end up in this downward spiral that leads me to failing to manage everything I’m trying to. I fall off the tight rope, and it takes a lot of work to climb back up the the start of it.

Dealing with this challenge is difficult for anyone, let alone people with mental illness. Before I started developing Schizoaffective Disorder, it was a little easier to keep on top of things. My OCD made it hard, but I’d been dealing with that for my whole life, so I had a lot of practice. Things changed, though, when I began experiencing more severe mood swings a few years ago. Actually, it became a little easier to manage my school-work-life balance initially because the depression was sort of familiar, and the hypomania drastically increased my productivity. I had periods where I was having a pretty hard time keeping up with anything, falling behind in school a little, getting more shifts covered at work, and letting the laundry pile up. But then, like a a light at the end of my depression tunnel, I would get a sudden burst of energy that I couldn’t explain, and I would almost completely catch up on everything.

When my mood symptoms became more severe, my mania caused more havoc than relief. Later I began experiencing more psychotic symptoms, and everything seemed to be going steadily down hill. I couldn’t keep up with my activities of daily living, and the mental health side of my tight rope was pulling on all of my weight. I was quickly losing my balance. In the summer of 2019, my mental health challenges became an acute crisis, and I needed urgent help. I was experiencing manic, depressive, and mixed episodes, and I was trying out medications for the first time. I was stabilizing a little bit, but thinks were still hard, and I realize now that I was in the prodromal phase of a psychotic disorder that would soon and likely be a life-long illness. I was confused and trying to manage my work like and school life and, as always, walk the tight rope.

Now, in 2022, I still struggle daily with balancing my life with Schizoaffective Disorder. I’ve had four hospitalizations, which pulled me toward the side of dealing with my mental health. I’ve transferred to a university to study Aerospace Engineering, which has pulled toward the side of prioritizing school. I’ve been walking with aforementioned tight rope, and I’ve fallen quite a few times. It’s okay that I’ve fallen, even though it’s hard to realize that most of the time. I feel like I’ve failed as a partner, sometimes by not pulling my weight around the house and sometimes by not taking care of myself properly and leaning on my boyfriend pretty heavily. I feel like I’ve failed as a team member while working on my senior project, abandoning my team while I deal with my mental health. As I progress through learning more about my illness, I realize that it’s okay to have people to lean on, to help me stay balanced, and I’m so grateful for the people in my life who have done this for me. I’m learning as I go, and I’m slowly getting better at walking the line.