Posted by Tomatheus on May 10, 2015, at 13:42:30
In reply to Re: Destroyed reputation and how to live with it, posted by Lamdage22 on May 10, 2015, at 10:53:48
Lamdage,
I think you're right that a person's reputation can become damaged as a consequence of being in an intense psychotic state involving delusional thinking. I would say that my own reputation has been damaged in a way as a consequence of believing and saying delusional things. So, how does one live with a reputation that's been damaged from being in a psychotic state?
I may not have the best answers to this question, but I would recommend trying to rebuild your credibility and the trust that others have in you by acting in a way that demonstrates that you can be taken seriously again and that you can be trusted again. At the same time, you may need to remind those who were in your presence when you were making off-the-wall remarks that your tendency toward delusional thinking was at least in part influenced by what's likely disrupted brain chemistry, whether that was due to the Nardil that you took, a psychiatric illness with psychotic features, or a combination of the two. Reminding others of this might not necessarily lead others to be more confident that you won't end up thinking and saying delusional things again, but I think that it might help them to understand that you're fighting a battle with something that can lead you to say things that aren't in line with what you would otherwise say.
But again, I would say that doing what you can to rebuild the trust that others have in you is important to repairing your reputation. Like a lot of other things, a mental illness can have a damaging aspect on many aspects of our lives, and if we achieve some semblance of a recovery from our illnesses, rebuilding after the worst of the damage is done is a big part of moving forward once the worst of the symptoms have subsided. I think that a lot of the "rebuilding" effort that I speak of should involve getting involved to the fullest extent possible in some of the same activities you were involved in before you experienced psychotic symptoms, but I also think that reaching out to those who were in your presence while you were experiencing your worst psychotic symptoms to try to strengthen your relationships with those individuals is important. So, while we can't so much erase what we did and said while we were experiencing delusions, we can always improve ourselves and take advantage of opportunities to positively change ourselves and the world around us as those opportunities present themselves.
Tomatheus
Has long-standing difficulties with energy and concentration, as well as psychotic and cognitive symptoms
Taking Abilify & supplements
poster:Tomatheus
thread:1078809
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20150214/msgs/1078843.html