u/Fast-Specific-3966

I’m curious if anyone else had an “Aha!” Moment of there being something wrong. Like when you realized you were schizophrenic or that you weren’t like everyone else. I’m 23 and have lived with paranoia since I was 16. When I was 19 it got progressively worse to the point I slept with a knife next to me at night and was convinced every room in my house had a different monster in it that wanted to get me. I thought I just had bad anxiety and was dealing with it poorly. I had been on anxiety meds before which helped my social anxiety but the paranoia remained and I was like “oooh so these are my natural human survival instincts and once again I’m just doing a really bad job at dealing with it. How the hell do other people handle this shit?” It wasn’t until I was 22 and I was convinced my whole family was dead did it hit me that something was wrong. I went back into therapy and when I turned 23 is when I started to have some actual visual hallucinations because up until that point I would see stuff like monsters and faces but they were in my head as like a projection, if that makes any sense?? But it was then that my psychiatrist was like “you have schizophrenia” and I never once considered that to be an option for some reason.

Did anyone else have an “oh there is something wrong with me” moment or was it apparent and you could figure it out pretty easily?

I feel the need to post this because when I tell my family and friends they don’t realize how difficult it was for me to get to this point. I officially have a full time job and feel happy with my life. I’ve been dealing with unmedicated and undiagnosed schizophrenia since I was 19, I‘ve suffered from paranoia since I was 16 and it’s affected my life in many ways. I struggled to maintain friendships, leave my house, I felt I couldn’t trust my family, and work was a prison for me.

as of last year I officially have my diagnosis, am now medicated, and fortunately my family and friends have been incredibly supportive of me. There are things they don’t fully understand because they don’t experience what I do but I feel like I can trust them all again and that’s wonderful.

I’ve also gone from working Two jobs to having one job which allows me to get proper sleep to help better my condition.

all of this is an insane difference from the miserable life I was living before and people who are close to me are like “yeah that’s life” and don’t fully realize exactly what I had to go through to get here. I know not everyone is a fortunate as I am to have been given my opportunities, but maybe someone finds comfort that there is a chance it’ll get better and things will work out. I feel like I’m finally living a normal life after years in survival mode.

I hope all of you have a wonderful day today.

stay strong.

I have the delusion that people can read my mind. I’m especially worried if someone is touching my head that my thoughts are transferring to them directly. what I find funny about it is that I genuinely filter my thoughts to what I think the person would rather see so they don’t think I’m weird. A lot of the time I like to imagine my story characters kissing and if I sense someone next to me and I don’t want them to read my mind I panic and my thoughts go like this:

“oh no! I don’t want them to know I’m thinking about boys kissing! filter the thoughts quickly!!! puppies! kittens! baking a cake! boys kissing- NO! MATH!” and I’m sweating the whole time while in reality the person is just sitting there not caring.

i think this is funny and whenever I tell my friends they focus on the fact that people can’t actually read my mind so I wanna tell people who will understand. Hopefully someone related at all haha.

Hello,

Almost a year ago I got diagnosed with schizophrenia and have been put on antipsychotics. They have actually helped me a lot on many ways but I’ve come to realize I can’t daydream anymore. I used to daydream for hours everyday and now I don’t do it as much. Which if I wasn’t a writer would probably be beneficial because admittedly I was daydreaming and pacing around a concerning amount.

Does anyone know of a way to negate the affects of my medication for just a few hours so I can think properly enough to write? Someone recommend coffee once which seems to be working but it makes my heart race and gives me the shakes. So does anyone know of any alternatives at all? If not I’ll just stick to drinking coffee when it’s time to lock in. But I would like to have healthier symptoms I guess.