For so many of us, being a caregiver of a loved one with schizophrenia is like a death of a thousand cuts.  The emotions that we caregivers go through on a daily basis is just wrenching.  We swing from seeing the loss of who our loved one once “was,” to seeing a medication fail – or at least not do all that we hoped, to watching our loved one struggle with tasks they used to be able to do without thinking, to having hope that they will recover, to having no hope at all.

Our pendulum of emotions swings wide as we try to push the schizophrenia rock up the hill.  We mourn the entire situation – who our loved one used to be, the life we hoped for them, the future that may now seem bleak, and even our own life.  We experience unfathomable grief, but then  have to be there, ready to jump into the next situation to support our loved one, because even though the entire situation is ridiculously hard, they are still here.  We are still here.

So, we experience ambiguous loss.  We wish so hard for a different situation and yearn for positive outcomes, but are constantly dragged under by the tide of challenges we and our loved ones face. We have to remain resolute, despite our heavy hearts.

In this month’s podcast, I talk with Jerri Clark who offers more about ambiguous loss and strategies for coping. She gives online seminars about coping with ambiguous losses related to severe mental illness.  I don’t talk much about loss in my book, “Schizophrenia and Other Related Disorders. Handbook For Caretakers,” but it is such an important topic to discuss, and well, embrace.