Although limiting, there’s room to live life with mental illness.
The aliens are imposters and have taken over her best friend Steve. A terrifying figure is towering over her desk with an axe. The evil forces have been following her and trying to ruin her for days, but why? It must be because of all those people she killed with her thoughts or the fields with the bodies. Yes, they found the fields with all her victims. Was killing an infant a bit too far?
“Are you an alien?” Elyn Saks asked her psychotherapist of more than 14 years.
“No, I am not.” answered the psychotherapist.
This was a reworded excerpt from Dr. Elyn Saks’s book “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness”. Dr. Elyn Saks is an Orrin B. Evans Distinguished Professor of Law, Professor of Psychology, and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at USC Gould School of Law[i]. Dr. Saks has been battling schizophrenia since the beginning of her academic life; she has shown signs from a very young age. She is the author of The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, a memoir of her life with schizophrenia. Her memoir is an account of perseverance and hope; hope in life limited by mental illness and hope in compassion and empathy between people.
According to Mayo Clinic’s official website, schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally that may result in some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior that impairs daily functioning and can be disabling. People with this disorder reflect an impaired ability to function, disorganized speech, and require lifelong treatment.
In this detailed memoir, Dr. Saks writes on living in fear due to the horrific hallucinations and breaks in reality that were caused by episodes of psychosis, provoked by something as simple as the stress we face from an interview and summer breaks. As a professor with multiple degrees, the academic life has offered her structure which in turn keeps her preoccupied and focused, but when she has an episode of psychosis and loses attention, she states:
“On the outside, there are signs, sounds, and smells; on the inside, you have your thoughts, feelings, memories, wishes, dreams, and fears. Each and every one of these, both inside and out, is knocking at your door, all at once.”
Battling schizophrenia is nothing short of a break in one’s own reality and a loss of connection, but Dr. Saks has proven that, although tough, it is possible to live a decent productive life within your limitations. Limitations are a part of our human existence that give us direction and provide guidelines if reflected on. If one acknowledges their mental illness and tries to work around their limitations, they may live a healthier life. It is worse to be in denial and continuously confronted to live the status quo of what a “normal life” is. Dr. Saks does not travel a far distance because it disrupts the structure she has created, which is a limitation caused by her illness. But in return, she knows how far to travel without disrupting it. Similarly, she will most likely be on medications for life, which again is a limitation, but in return, this is a guideline that she must follow to live functionally.
In an era of subjective freedoms, the thought of limitations must seem like a nightmare. But there is freedom in limitations so long as our choices are our own. Limitations are one of life’s many conditions we face, whether it is by mental/physical illness, demographic factors, and so on. In simpler words, all that defines us limits us, but also gives us direction in return.
DISCLAIMER:
People who have schizophrenia do not face violent thoughts 24/7, nor do they execute them. There are medications/treatments and variations to the experience.
[i] University of Southern California
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