The Other Side of Crazy

Download or read book The Other Side of Crazy written by Virginia Linn and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My life has been a series of mysteries. From a very early age, I was confronted with many challenges: psychological abuse, sexual abuse, and a range of mental disorders. I overcame many of these, but not without severe consequences.Schizophrenia is a chronic mental health condition characterized primarily by hallucinations (hearing and seeing things that aren't there) and delusions (false and fixed beliefs that are held regardless of contradictory evidence.) Schizoaffective disorder includes symptoms of schizophrenia as well as symptoms of a mood disorder such as mania (euphoria, racing thoughts, and insomnia) and depression (sadness, emptiness, and worthlessness). Dissociative identity disorder, or DID, is a mental process which produces a lack of connection in a person's actions, thoughts, feelings, memories, or sense of identity. My story is complicated. As a woman with a career in costume design and raising three boys with a husband I loved, I thought I was normal. Then, when I was 38, my life suddenly spiraled out of control. I experienced full-blown schizophrenia. Following my breakdown, I lived in multiple realities for a very long time. Little by little, through therapy and self-discovery, I returned to the reality other people shared. With time and effort, I wrote down my experiences and did everything I could to make them easy to understand.In my own hero's journey, I ventured into the labyrinth of insanity and back, and witnessed The Other Side of Crazy.