Hoping you get better.
The feeling is hard to articulate, but I no longer connect to my feelings or thoughts in the ways I had been accustomed to.
My new behaviors and patterns are somewhat destructive to the life I was building prior to my “break,” and it’s incredibly maddening and depressing trying to balance “good for new me” and “good for the life old me built and the people he loved.”
It goes way beyond not simply enjoying the things I used to enjoy any more.
I’m on antipsychotics and no one is going to let me go off them, including me.
I’m never, ever going off my antipsychotic.
Same here. I had the mix of a heavy burnout and a broke up a couple of years ago and I'm still recovering.
It's curious how I totally had the same kind of "logarithmic" recovery that some other people wrote in other comments here. It might be how the brain reacts to that.
After my psychotic break and starting treatment for bipolar, I was a shell of a person. I had the opportunity to become anyone I wanted to be. I picked what I thought my best traits were from my last self and started on a journey of self discovery.
I vaguely remember my previous self and he had completely different motivations. The only similarities I recognize are things I decided to keep.
To keep this bit brief, my interests changed in ways I didn’t expect. My previous self would never have shamelessly written pornography.
My previous self used to care what people thought of him. I don’t. I only care about the consequences of how people see me. This doesn’t make a sociopath because I do care about how people feel. I want to communicate effectively. I try to tailor my actions so other people feel I am listening and that I care, because I do. My previous self wasn’t so explicitly and logically calculating about relationships.
My previous self was brutally honest. I try to be kind when confrontation or blunt honesty is necessary.
Overall, my maturity increased by about 20 years in the last 3 years. My previous self is a person I’m not fond of.