I've been lurking here and been more active in r/psychosis too, exploring what I experienced through everyone else's experiences and as a result, I've been able to figure out the language I needed to share with my friends and family and have their support and validation too.

2.5 years on from being admitted to the psych ward, and I'm now 'out' fully irl that I had a psychosis (except not on LinkedIn for my professional identity - yet).

Being 'out' is not something I ever thought I'd be able to be after the psychiatric help I had because that narrative feeds into a very harmful stigma around 'just forget and move on' which makes us hide ourselves away due to shame and/or guilt.

However I learned from Brene Brown that vulnerability is the opposite of shame, and now I've dealt with a lot of my vulnerability and resentment from a medical intervention (though it was needed as I became verbally and physically aggressive on the ward) in its raw form through these subs and resources shared, I am able to be confidently and assertively open about it in my own life.

The more I can live authentically as me, the better for me. I am not 'crazy'. I suffered through a horrendous ordeal that cannot simply be explained away as 'delusional'. I understand that I became detached from the reality we all know, but it was my reality at the time and it felt as real to me then as this reality feels to me now. I've come out the other side in a way that's working for me.

So I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's active here and also the ones who are not - just seeing how many people are here, matters.

I've been advised by one of my friends to seek out 'expert by experience' opportunities to help others learn about psychosis and my dream now is to help inform the medical profession better in treatments that are more balanced in validating our experiences instead of relying so heavily on just being medicated and numbed.

I do think Olanzapine that I was on for a year and made me disassociate a lot, especially when I came off it, has changed my brain chemistry in a way that I do now disassociate (after being off meds since August 2021) as a manifestation of anxiety when I never did before medication. This is valid and I want to talk about it openly somehow with people in the medical profession who need to hear it.