When Mental Illness Keeps Me From Keeping House


 Living with an illness like schizoaffective disorder, means that everyday tasks can seem insurmountable sometimes. This is due to symptoms like avolition (lack of motivation) and anhedonia (lack of pleasure in doing things). These are what are known as 'negative symptoms'. And unfortunately they are symptoms that our modern psychiatric medications don't really treat well. 


I enjoy a clean home. I (usually) enjoy making it that way, too. I love the way a freshly cleaned house smells and feels. I like picking out and trying new cleaning and tidying products. However, negative symptoms can sometimes really get in the way of those feelings. How do I manage? To be honest, a lot of the time not well. I know I need to tackle that pile of laundry in the hallway, or get that pile of dishes in the sink over into the dishwasher, but doing so feels like climbing a mountain with a screaming goat tied to my back. 


So how do I get past this? It seems like a simplistic answer, but the truth is I force myself. I do things before my brain gets a chance to even think about them. That means I put that dish in the dishwasher as soon as I finish with it, I pick up those dirty socks and throw them in the washing machine when they enter my field of vision. 


Now, does that mean that I am perfect at this 100% of the time. Absolutely not. Have I always been able to do these tasks even when they are extremely difficult? No. There have been (and still are) times when all I am able to do is sit on the couch in silence staring off into the void. When times like that hit, it helps to be reminded that it is about progress over perfection.


It helps that I celebrate even the tiniest wins, because wins are made up of sometimes a lot of things when you break them down. Like now, as I write this, I am listening to the washing machine do its thing while drinking coffee. That means that I got out of bed, made the coffee, took my meds, put the clothes in the washer, put in the soap and turned it on. It seems so simple, but when you break it down like that it seems like I did a whole lot of things. And I did. And today I will take that win.

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