Today I'd like to share the challenges I face balancing weight loss and avoiding becoming "hangry" (hungry plus angry) with schizoaffective disorder.

My medications for schizoaffective disorder cause a lot of weight gain, as readers of this blog well know. So, when I developed osteoarthritis in my knees at age 42, I started going to a nutritionist. I wanted to lose weight to take pressure off my knees. After a while, my nutritionist put me on a popular medication to support weight loss. At first, it was working really well. But then terrible side effects set in, including unbearable nausea, so I had to stop taking it.

I have a tool in my toolbox for schizoaffective disorder that I haven’t written about before. The tool is earplugs.

My schizoaffective disorder tells me a lot of bad things about myself and makes me think I’m a bad person. Here are some of the ways that I feel like a bad person because of my schizoaffective disorder and how I fight back.

Since I have arthritis in my knees and schizoaffective disorder, the migraines I suffer are a substantial extra load. And now I know what it’s like to have my physical illnesses treated more seriously than my mental illness. This is the story of a time when I stood up for my mental health, and my mental illness was treated seriously.

I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, in 2002 (after a diagnosis of schizophrenia in 1999). But the anxiety that so often accompanies bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder has been with me since early childhood.

I think I’m on a very good medication cocktail. There are several reasons why, but the funniest one is that when I typed “medication cocktail” into my notes on my phone as a story idea, the predictable word “hour” appeared. I was able to see the humor in that, and when I told my husband, Tom, about it, he said, “Medication happy hour!” and we both laughed. Ain’t love grand?

I have schizoaffective disorder and take birth control pills for my premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). But lately, I have been having a problem with my birth control. Here’s what’s been going on.

I haven’t heard schizoaffective voices in over a year, but when I used to hear them, I encountered a lot of stigma and became reluctant to mention them. Much of it was self-stigma, in that I wouldn’t talk about them to the people around me unless they were people I trusted and who knew already that I heard voices. But, the thing is, I was correct in not revealing, say, at work when I heard voices, as there is both stigma and self-stigma involved.

My schizoaffective anxiety makes it hard to go outside and exercise daily. Here’s why.