Which scares you more cognitive deterioration or persisting terrible mood?

[noname223]

I often ask me that question when I compare me and my sister.

My sister has huge cogntive damage due to her past psychosis. I sometimes have the feeling she lost parts of her sanity (and she is absolutely not aware of it). I think her thinking is now way slower. And she also said she feels like her intellectual capacities got a major hit. Sometimes I have the feeling she is another person since her episodes.

Me as someone who is obsessed how he is perceived by other people and wanting to make people believe he was smart such a condition would be torture.

My cognitive skills got no damage because of the past psychosis. I rather had major depression way longer and way more intense compared to my sister. On top I had extremely painful agitation and severe psychosomatic pain.

I am honestly not sure who of us has on an objective scale the worse fate. I think it is hard to predict and only time will tell. I think I will be forced to ctb in the future. So many people would say me. My sister instead sees life as a gift and as the most valuable thing one has. So she denied suicidality. I am affected longer than her by mental issues. I think my life quality overall is worse. But I have the feeling my sister makes some strategical major mistakes and might ruin her life by it. Maybe the deterioration of her thinking abilities plays a role in that.

So what scares you more?

 

[Sulyya]

I'm not sure which I would choose if I were made to, but I will say cognitive decline scares me more. Both are essentially being attacked by your own mind but losing reasoning ability is frightening. Further, I'm not sure which is scarier, realizing it or not realizing it

 

[Kasumi]

I think your situation is more painful and more difficult to deal with, but her situation is a lot scarier,.. at least to me.

The times when I feel like I'm loosing myself, like I don't know who I am or what I'm thinking and feeling are honestly the worst, way worse than however bad I feel at any time.
That is cause even when I feel very bad, I still know who I am, I'm still myself, I know who the people are that are important to me and why.
Luckily that kind of thing was only temporary so far, at most lasting a few weeks, if I were to feel like that forever, it would be worse than dying, cause it would essentially be that the actual me died but I'm still living on as a lifeless doll.

I don't know if that's how your sister feels, probably not, as it sounded like she's quiet okay with her state now.
That said you also mentioned it doesn't feel like she is the same person anymore.
Even though, even if she's not exactly herself anymore or even someone else entirely, I think as long as she thinks it's okay it probably is.
As long as she feels alive and like she is 'herself' I think that's good enough, even if you assume that her old self disappeared, her new self might just be as real.

So in terms of difficulty it's probably harder for you to make things work.

I'm glad though that you have your sister, I don't really know how close you are, but it does seem to me like you worry a lot about her.
If you are worried about her making some major mistakes or even ruining her life, why not just watch over her and help her out?
I think you should talk about that with her, if you haven't already, about the worries you were writing in your post.

I don't know about your situation but it sure would be quiet a beautiful thing if you could make up for each others weaknesses, no?

 

[Hollowman]

I've been dealing with cognitive deterioration for 32 years from a mixture of drugs that caused psychosis or dp/dr still not quite sure. My vocabulary was larger when I 12. It sucks getting less intelligent over time. I'm so far behind I'll never catch up.