My name is Skye and I was diagnosed with Psychosis and was after a 10 day hospital stay determined to be Schizophrenic and medicated for it thereafter with Caplyta. After 2 1/2 years my doctors think I was misdiagnosed and are asking me to get off of medication for it. I do believe I had it briefly and my recovery wasn’t accomplished on my own whatsoever. 
Whether you believe in God or not yourself, most patients with Schizophrenia come to believe in him with a term called by medical professionals “religiosity.” My hope with this entry is that to those people this can become a sort of strategy guide to combat illness progression and deterioration. To others it can be an idea they hadn’t considered before and worth a shot. I myself was a self-confessed agnostic before my experience and now I am a confident believer in Jesus. I’m lucky enough to call him my friend.

 

So you’ve gotten a diagnosis of Schizophrenia from a mental health professional. They’ve told you it’s chronic and you’ll likely never be able to work again or go to school. You’re devastated and utterly confused. You can’t think straight and you’re scared so you ask why? What is Schizophrenia? They’ll tell you it’s a largely misunderstood phenomenon and it disrupts your cognitive abilities and may have a number of other effects like delusions or hallucinations. There is no cure but there is ongoing treatment and medication that may help you improve some. That’s it. Nobody truly understands it so they don’t know how to counsel you. They place you in hospitals when you have Psychosis that are not much more than glorified baby sitters. It feels more like a prison and you’re from then on treated with much less respect than you had previously been accustomed to. It seems that everyone you talk to just wants to say “Just stop it already.” It’s frustrating and scary and it’s a foreign world now that used to be home. Everyone is stressed. Your life is upended and the future seems bleak, but what if I told you that you COULD just stop it. That there’s always been a strategy put into book form ages ago. There’s also a Counselor who knows exactly what’s going on with you. He has all the time in the world for you too. You’ve likely already begun to sense that this is beyond an ailment and that there’s something metaphysical and spiritual about this whole occurrence. Many people that develop Schizophrenia find religion after their first episode. Mental health professionals term it “religiosity.” Most people with Schizophrenia end up telling strikingly similar stories of encounters with spirits. Before modern medicine it was actually just widely understood that it was a spiritual ailment. As overwhelming as that all seems, I want you to truly believe that there is hope. My favorite Bible quote is “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.” John 1:5. Jesus made the way to recovery. Below is my first hand experienced explanation of Schizophrenia with tips to help on your road to recovery.

 

Help for the sufferering Schizophrenic’s:

 

Schizophrenia is an attack by the enemy( aka demonic or evil spirits that are sent to attempt to torment you- do not be afraid! They have no real power over you and they're just taking advantage of your confusion at the beginning). It starts when you fall from light and love and God’s protective presence into a sin nature. You've become what the Bible calls "double minded." Scizophrenia actually means "split-mind."  You've moved away from your normal spiritual nature which was made in God's image.  This is due to a series of dark and evil thinking or deeds which appalls God.(Don’t worry! He never wants to give up on you, so you need to not give up on yourself. Light is still there and available when you hope for it and pursue and please God! He is always reaching for you!  He abides in peace though so try your best to stay calm!)Jesus died to make this truth that there’s a way back to Him. This is your fault in whatever way it is your fault but don’t fixate on that! Jesus has redeemed you at the cross and you need only to accept him as YOUR Lord and savior.  Guilt does not help and only helps the enemy drag you further into darkness and belief that you are defined as evil, but that isn’t so, and believing that you’re evil makes you feel more entitled to evil. AND our sin nature makes evil seem alluring. However, you were made wonderfully( designed to favor light and love and God) and being away from that by a course of actions makes you evil at present but not lost entirely. God wants to reconnect with you, so now you need to grow! God passes Judgment and starts trials as an attempt to purify you and prepare you to be more like Jesus you see.  However, if you're not a believer, you're left completely confused by what's happening to you.  Without Jesus a state of confusion ensues most likely due to fear and uncertainty of what’s happening with you after you shift sides from light to dark. Your feelings are exacerbated by the enemy in your vulnerable state since you aren’t protected and this leads to Psychosis or a break down of your sense of reality. Your mind will seek to understand what’s happening and since with God there is rest and comfort and peace, the converse is restlessness and fixation and overthinking. In your panic you seek wildly for an answer to the instability and consider dark and evil things that you wouldn't have called reality beforehand.  At this point the enemy is waiting to see which dark path of thinking you’ll pursue when you’re weak -anger, hate, powerlessness, arrogance, delusions of Grandeur( fed by the enemy to make you feel magical and power hungry) greed in understanding( this leads to a further split away from the stable reality you built for yourself beforehand due to the fact that you’re most likely beginning to see an inkling of things bigger than yourself i.e. Schizophrenia.). Whatever line of wrong thinking you pursue the enemy will exaggerate. Every dark or evil move in your thoughts the enemy will attempt to recreate or feeds more darkness to push you further in that direction.  The more evil you allow yourself to do or believe the more edge he MAY have on you. If you continue to think alternately you’re flipping your reality to a falsehood. Falsehoods are against God because he is truth. We were made in God’s image and so we’re more powerful than that to go and believe an untruth. Sometimes you need to get hard on yourself and remember to respect yourself enough to not confuse yourself further. At the end of the day even if it’s the enemy attacking you, you have to remember that he has no power on his own. He’s being allowed to bother you by the rules of justice. BUT!!! God is good and merciful and kind. If there be some judgment on you you have to remember that it’s from a springboard of love. What he really wants is to prosper you in the light. He is a Father. Fathers have to lay down the law for their kiddos.

 

You will need to retrain yourself to love and by his grace and mercy may you recover over time. Most do! God rewards those who seek him diligently, and the enemy attacks those that he's afraid of so consider the possibility that you're being called by God to do his good will.  So be encouraged. You can pray for anything you feel that you lack to overcome this and he'll give it generously to you without finding fault because that is HIS character.  He can give you peace and rest when you need it and wisdom and strength when you're ready to fight again.  You may need medication to help build your bridge back to the light so take the help. You may also feel the prospect of being sunny while your sick as daunting or exhausting but it's really the best thing to do is to seek love and light heatedness.  All good and perfect things are of God so that includes medicine. In fact Jesus respected doctors and emphasized our need of them.
 

Tips to recover:

Put on the full armor of God-  God in his love for us gave us the tools to protect us from spiritual attack. The full armor of God is a mindframe that shields you from the enemy and includes:

 

The Helm of salvation: understanding that you are saved because you accepted Jesus as your savior.  That means you are free from the curse and negative consequences of sin “Those who are set free by the Lord, are free indeed.” So all of your sins, once baptized, are covered by the blood-past, present, and future sins in entirety nailed to the cross and left there not to harm you but to be finished.

 

The Breast Plate of Righteousness-  the enemy cannot corrupt you’re heart if you act righteously and with a GOOD heart because that repels him

 

The Shield of Faith-  adopting an attitude of hope and certainty that God’s got you no matter what and the future is bright for you having a shield of faith.  Not considering worries isn’t lazy and unproductive but it is actually protective.  God says not to worry or fear any evil for good reason and just carry on

 

The Belt of Truth-  the enemy will try to derail you on your walk with falsehoods and lead you to all uncertainty so it’s important to reference the Bible when so ever you aren’t sure about things and also pray for clarity.  Then equip that knowledge as the truth that keeps you from confusion (God’s word is absolute truth and can absolutely be trusted)

 

The Boots of the Gospel or aka peace-  you are to strive to live in a state of peace because it’s in that state that Jesus can walk with you and do the most good for you.  Jesus died to deliver us from our sins and he ushered in a new era of peace called the period of Grace- where God gives us extra grace and mercy so that we can live freely and not be in fear of Judgement. In fact, God rarely judges you, and though you now find yourself having been judged and punished you just need to remember to take it as constructive criticism by God, because everything he does is with love and he corrects those he loves.

 

The Sword of the Spirit- when you become a child of God and are baptized you receive the Holy Spirit.  This means God accepts you as his child and he’s giving you his own spirit to rest in your heart to protect you and fight for you.  YOU NOW HAVE SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY OVER ALL EVIL! This means that you can simple rebuke evil spirits that try to attach to you because they have listen to you and flee if you command them to.  When you do, the Holy Spirit casts them out according to your will if it aligns with God’s will.  The power of the blood covers you and it’s power never wains.  There is also power in the name of the Lord, so cast out and rebuke evil spirits, monitoring spirits, or demons in the name of Jesus your savior.

 

 

 

Pray- pray for help from Jesus! No matter what you do, nothing can EVER separate you from the love of God. He can be disappointed in you, mad at you even but always loves you. He is that capable and infinitely good. That’s what it means by glory be him. He’s all glory and love. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that he’s a pushover though because he loves you. Our weak sin nature will lead us to want to see him as a stepping stone in our scramble upwards or a mechanism.  He can grow weary of you if you linger in sun so do your best to grow forward with your inner changes.

Scientists theorize that Schizophrenia is a chemical imbalance in the brain due to a burning of the small capillaries of the brain that inhibit the transfer of brain chemicals from one area of the brain communicating to another.  You are essentially left in a dense fog and processing information and retaining memory is difficult.  Your higher cognitive abilities are inhibited and you find it hard to feel emotions.  Reality is that it's a spiritual attack by an enemy that gains entry into areas of your mind and causes the damage and then demonically oppresses your forward growth and oppresses your emotions along with it.  It is trying to hinder your walk with Jesus.  Evil spirits can cause physical harm within you when you sin.  Rejecting Jesus or the light out of confusion or misguided self-reservedness and attempts to protect yourself or to avoid answering Jesus's call equate to a very big sin that allows the "critter" as I call it,so as not to be afraid,  because God says fear no evil and trust him, in.  Then as you move further toward sin it gains power from those unrepentant sins and harms you accordingly. For myself, I experienced a sensation of a burning brain just before my episode of Psychosis.  At that point, the capillaries network was inflamed and damage done.  You can prohibit it from doing so through the Holy Spirit and the blood and power of Jesus's name, but initially you may not know this.  Our chemistry and biology work hand in hand with our spirits so spiritual attacks can disrupt our brain chemistry.
 

Doctor's will tell you that you're essentially broken and disabled from working a job or continuing your education.  However, DON'T CONSIDER YOURSELF AS DISABLED OR UNABLE.  That's what the evil entity aimed to do to you and wants you to believe.  Things will be extremely hard for you after Psychosis.  Doctor's liken it to brain damage, but trudge forward anyways!  Jesus wants you to become an overcomer.  He loves those that rise up.  Push forward through the fog.  Aim for the same standards you held yourself to before even though you fall short.  Welcome Jesus back into you and set forth to follow him. 
 

Apply these tips:
 

Get productive- do not let anyone tell you you’re incapable. You may find it hard to concentrate and remember what to do but you must relentlessly push forward. God will reach and grab you to pull you along. You are never alone. Continuing to do things and even aiming for a high standard exercises your brain. Your brain is made to heal itself from damage, and it can make new pathways of memory.

 

Avoid sin- look inward on yourself. Ask yourself what things do I do without care of harm towards another person? Do I feed hate towards others? Do I get angry at others quickly and without a just reason and make them know about it? Do I take my frustrations with myself out on others? Do I harm myself and hurt the ones that love me? God is the love within us and anything you do or believe that harms or compromises the shape of love within you sets you that much apart from him. When you know that it’s wrong with you’re senses (aka as our protective fence between us and sin) and you choose to do it anyways for some justification that you’re darkness feeds you to make you think that it’s just ok this once or that this is an exception because it’s not that big of a deal- that disappoints God and displeases him. God has been described as the mirror in the sky and it’s written that we should try to treat others as we want to be treated. So if you’re hoping for mercy in your dark time you should strive to give others mercy.

Read- the Bible is designed to be your guide back to God. It was made out of love to keep you in-line on the path of blessings so that you produce fruit (peace, love, joy, happiness, patience, and good will) that pleases God and makes the world a better place. It is the lamp onto your feet as scripture puts it.  We have responsibility to him and to each other to lift ourselves and others up. He wants to have a relationship with you, so you should aim to be worthy of his friendship. Not perfect but striving everyday.

Lean on Jesus-your instinct is to fully understand what's happening to you so that you can protect yourself.  Understanding can eventually be a good thing, but the Bible says "lean not on you're own understanding."  Overthinking is what got you into this pickle. The best thing to do is pray to God that Jesus protect you and illuminate the best path forward.  He can give you the understanding you need incrementally as you need it, so you don't become muddy headed as you try to consider too many things at once.  The best way to receive his council is by attending church, though he'll talk to you in many ways including signs.  Do Not Chase Signs!  Jesus does everything in his power to keep you on the right path including signs and though these wonders do deserve awe and God deserves glory for them, the enemy too can throw confusing signs in there and also constantly reading signs can split your mind further.  As a babe in Christ, the beginning stage is to just try to earnestly and sincerely appreciate Jesus.  Just going to church and accepting his guidance that he caters to you slowly, and getting to know him is all you should be doing for a long while after your onset.

 

Quick comparison of your motives before you act- 7 deadly sins:
 

Greed, lust, pride, wrath, envy, gluttony and sloth- these are a part of sin nature and are the roots of all evil.  Are you reaching for "extra" beyond the peaceful and comfortable moderation.  You may be working in tandem with one of these sins.  Its deceptive. It doesn't feed you like you think it will, instead it darkens you.

Jesus will manage you in order to root out evil within you.  You can't do it on your own but with Jesus's help and the Holy Spirit you can so as Jesus says "Be encouraged!"

 

Ask yourself if what you’re feeling is motivated by any of these things.

 

Always remember that it’s by Gods kindness that you are growing. So ally yourself with Jesus and fight the good fight!