[curiousone]

I hate this friggin illness. My life was already complicated enough but now I have spiraled downwards. It's been 5 years since I've battled the damn illness (schizophrenia). It came as a blow when i first got dianosed. I'm like me? No, no way. I dont even know where the heck I got this sickness. My parents don't have it. Its supposed to be genetic.. I somehow always feel like I'm inside this guys head all the time. Like I can be him and whatnot. I feel like this is so real because I'm this very socially awkward person, who seems wiered i would guess to "normal everyday people" and when I think of this guy its like I can be like him and people respond to me differently even. Also I keep feeling people are "faking me" like emulating me and it''s driving me more mad cus I can't stand people doing me. It's as if anyone can do me and they're always laughing at it when they fake what I'm like. I know this sounds wiered. Anyone relate to this. They say I have schizophrenia but I have actually ever heard voices, or hullicinated. But I know its delusional thinking you can see through the eyes of someone else other than yourself. The worser thing is where the hell do you go to get help? I keep thinking if I just get the right therapist orf phychotherapy I could be like everyone else. I guess that delusional as well but thats the only hope I have. Only everytime I call one up a professional none of them seem able to take on schizophrenia, as you out of touch with realtiy. This really SUCKS. My life sucked before but this is worse. It has set me back and its unfair . Normal people don't have to worry about thoughts being put in their heads and thier thoughts being brodcasted to eveyone.
I keep looking for help but keep getting none. I finally got a hold of the "ACT( Assertive community treatment) team who are made up of a group of people such as a psychiatrist, social worker, occupational worker, Registered nurses etc, who are supposed to help people with severe mental illness (mainly schizophrenia and bipolar). I thought to myself," yay this is what i have been longing for" Yet the thoughts in my head seemed to tell me that this isn't going to help, its a waste of your time . I just dispelled these thoughts as the illness trying to stop me, but the thoughts alway seem right. After meeting with the doctor and another person, I got to thinking this is not going to help me they ways I thought it would get help. This is all just so depression. How long do I have to suffer with this illness and depression as well as anxiety

I know exactly how you feel. I havent been diagnosed with schizophrenia but Im sure I have it. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety a few years ago though, and its gotten worse since then. I started to have signs of psychosis like 2 years ago but at the time I didnt know there was anything wrong with me. I was glad when I finally realized that there was a problem though, I always had weird feeling but I was so used to feeling weird that I thought it was normal. I have never actually heard a voice or hallucinated, but I have heard noises like water dripping and could have sworn it was someone talking and spying on me. I have also seen images in the corner of my eye but when I turn to look it dissapears. I have very delusional thinking though.

I have tons of weird feelings that I have to tell myself arent real, but still I have a bad feelings about it. I thought that people could see me through the TV and see my thoughts. I get real paranoid sometimes and I cant even sleep with the lights off from the fear of aliens and things. I have thought that I am one of the only real people left alive and the rest are robots or something. When I go places everyone seems to look at me weird and talk amongst themselves and stare at me and spy on me. I always have a weird feeling that Im being watched and I always see the same cars and people looking out at me and pointing on me. When I ask my close friend why people are doing this, they always tell me noone has ever looked at me funny or talked bad about me and Im just too paranoid, so maybe it is all in my mind and noone watching me, but I cant be sure.

Im still hoping that its caused by some minor physical illness, but I have been to the doctor and they always tell me Im healthy. So Im starting to think that I made up that I had a physical problem or something and Im just messed up mentally.

[spiritual_emergency]

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curiousone, I have described the process of psychosis as a crisis of identity -- you don't know who you are anymore. I attribute this to the collapse of one's sense of self-identity. My introduction to that state was due to multiple losses as accompanied by trauma but there are other means of getting to that space. For example, many young people find that their first introduction to psychosis is as a result of drug experimentation.

It's also my experience that there are certain phases in life when the ego (one's sense of self-identity) is already a little thin because you are in a transitional phase of life already. These transitional phases include adolescence, young adulthood and midlife. My own opinions on the matter are somewhat different from those in the mainstream but I cannot speak from the perspective I have not experienced.

The worser thing is where the hell do you go to get help?

That's a good question. Obviously, you've been reaching out for help in various ways. I could only encourage you to continue to do so. However, I have found that some forms of help are better than others, some doctors are more skilled when it comes to dealing with this. I couldn't find a skilled professional to work with at that time but others have. However, even that one factor often won't be enough to provide all the help you need. People frequently need more than one kind of help. Some things I have found helpful are...

- To educate myself in terms of what happened to me and why. A great deal of my education came through the internet and various books. In my signature at the bottom of this post I have a link to my blogs, Spiritual Emergency and Spiritual Recovery. You may find some information there that fits your personal situation. I would encourage you to make use of that which is useful to you and to discard that which isn't.

- To seek out other people who have been through a similar experience. This helped me to normalize my own experience. For the most part, I found such people through the internet as well, at places like psychcentral.

This blog entry may also have some ideas for you in regard to self help: Personal Definitions of Recovery

Best of luck to both you and Pennkid.

[curiousone]

Thnak you for sharing your stories and you advice. I am begining to think that this really is a spiritual thing and that I need to be set free of it by prayer and combatting it with the word of God, the Bible. I believe many people are spiritually attacked but they dont know it. They firgure its just an illness but because I am a Christian and doing what I can to batlle this thing, I think that this might be a spirtual thing that I need to be set free of. I think we need to pray and submit to God and believe in Him and trust in Him to do what his word says.

[spiritual_emergency]

<blockquote>
Many people who go through this kind of experience do find that it has spiritual elements to it. They may liken their experience to a Biblical passage, find themselves identifying with a spiritual individual (e.g. Jesus Christ, Buddha), or consider their experience to be a spiritual test , initiation, or awakening. Religious experiences are so common they're considered by many to be one of the telltale symptoms. Once more, I attribute this to the lack of ego boundaries, or rather, the collapse/fragmentation of one's sense of self-identity.

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When the ego collapses, fragments, or disintegrates, shadow and archetypal contents flood in from the personal and collective unconscious. Those are Jungian terms and I use them because it's the best model I've found thus far for explaining this experience to others. During psychosis, what is experienced and what is seen by the people around you, are fragments of the collapsed ego (one's shattered sense of self), shadow material (which produces fear, terror, paranoia, shame, etc.), and archetypal material, such as the sense that one is Jesus Christ, or Buddha, or God... or has just seen one of those figures get into a cab on 49th street.

Yet, each of those religious icons are also symbols of center which is where the larger Self resides. If you make it all the way through the unconscious to the center -- for a little while at least -- you don't just play God, you are God, because there is nothing left at that point to separate the I-from-The-Thou. Within an Eastern framework, this might be called Self-realization or God-realization. In the West, it's called delusions of grandeur...

Source: How To Produce An Acute Schizophrenic Break


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It's been my experience that there is always a triggering factor to this kind of experience. I spoke of some of those above (stress, trauma, loss, drug use) and whatever this trigger is, it produced a blow to the ego's stability. For this reason, it's often useful to examine what was going on in your life previous to this experience beginning. Often, that will provide a clue as to why the experience is occurring as well as some insight into specific areas you need to focus your attention in order to move into recovery.

I also recommend the work of John Weir Perry for those who can identify religious or mythical elements within their experience.

[paxlily101]

i hate my illness too (bipolar 1 with psychosis). i'm 51 yrs old and i feel like life has been one long pain in the ***. i have almost no friends. my husband is my only real friend. my children are great. one of my kids is bp 1 also so he understands me. i guess i should be more thankful for my family. sometimes, maybe most of the time, i don't realize i'm delusional. sometimes i see it years later. i also say a lot of things that i wish i hadn't. things that drive people away from me. i've had hallucinations that are scary for most of my life but over the past two years they have actually been comforting, like presences of angels and seeing people i love. still, i could live without this!!! sometimes i think my priest in church is looking at me. yeh right, he's got hundreds of people in front of him and every week he's looking right at me....ugh. Meds help but they don't cure. i get depressed thinking that someday i'm going to be an old crazy lady. i just hope my husband is around to help me.
i hope you can get some help and find at least one true friend. but you also have this place to come to for friends who care and understand.