I saw a thread in the DID forum, about how people with multiple personalities can be accused of deliberate dishonesty, and I'm wondering if this is an experience those of us on the schizophrenic spectrum share. For years I didn't get on with my family because they thought I was a compulsive liar. I used to describe events that I clearly remembered, but which never happened. My father and brother called me "false memory" as a joke, but were often angry with my "melodrama".

Now in retrospect I can see that some of my delusions were quite hurtful, and I'm surprised they tried so hard to maintain a friendship with me under the circumstances. Now that I'm diagnosed and on medication things have got better, and if I say something that I remember but that they know didn't they no longer get angry, though they will point it out to me. It's confusing, because now I find myself questioning a lot of my memories, things which helped form me, and make me who I am today. What can I do about this? How do I learn to differentiate between a real memory and a false memory? For example, I sometimes have vivid dreams of encounters with others, conversation, argument etc... and then I believe, really truly believe, that these events occured. If I refer to these incidents and they didn't happen, my family can understand and help me, but what do I do at my voluntary work, or to people at church, my son's friends?

It bothers me. So I'm not proferring much information, or having many conversations right now. It scares me too much that I might betray either my illness, or be thought of as a drama queen.

Who else has this problem?