I’ve had anxiety for a long time, I’ve used all those & other coping mechanisms in the past. Unfortunately all of the tricks I’ve accumulated in 31 years of life all seen ineffective now. I have literally tried EVERYTHING. & yes I’m starting to realize that my stress is making this progress faster. In fact I’m not entirely sure if it was solely the marijuanas fault or if the subsequent stress & worry I had after the fact played a bigger role. Perhaps if I had just relaxed a little in the beginning I would have recovered. I am much much worse now than I was 2 months ago
Nothing is meaningful or beautiful to me anymore & music & TV & scents & stuff are too over stimulating to me. I have a lot of sensory overload
It’s never too late to start working on destressing. The brain has a remarkable ability to heal, even as an adult. Five years ago, it was commonly believed that the brain doesn’t make new neurons beyond age 25. Now, we know that’s false. The brain continues to repair itself for the rest of your life. Brain damage is no longer viewed as a permanent condition.
Anxiety disorders have a tendency to suddenly get worse, especially if this year has been as stressful as you say. Don’t focus so much energy on trying to figure out what you could have done differently. The truth is, you could have made every correct decision and still ended up here. You just never know. You are not a bad person, and you don’t deserve to have this pain because of a tiny mistake you made. So stop trying to punish yourself further.
If you want something you can do on your own, before you can meet with a doctor, try ordering a CBT workbook. My brother uses this one, and he loves it
Get the paperback version, not the kindle version, because you need to be able to write in it. In your case, a workbook specifically for stress and anxiety might work better for you, but this is the only one I know well enough to recommend. It mostly focuses on how to handle delusions and paranoia.
My entire life has been a disaster but this year has been particularly rough. My mom was diagnosed with congestive heart failure & that was hard to deal with considering I’ve been unhealthy attached to my mother since my father committed suicide. My grandfather passed away under particularly traumatic circumstances. Immediately following his death a lot of inner family conflict ensued that resulted in me being falsely accused of sexually molesting my son. After the case was dismissed I decided to move from CA to WA state to live with my sister. Moving so far away from my mom made me super depressed especially since shed never seem to answer my phone calls or texts & with me being borderline that made me feel abandoned. The living situation with my sister is intolerable at best. I didn’t do well at rebuilding my life in this new place so I have spent the majority of the past year completely isolated with nobody around to talk to. The little friends I had, my mom, my boyfriend never seemed to have time for me. I felt out of site out of mind. On the rare occasion that my sister would actually come home shed do nothing but bitch @ me & fight with me & it made me more depressed. Then she basically pushed the marijuana edibles on me & then my world got thrown into more of an upheaval. My family hasn’t been supportive at all. Instead they bitch about how my mental health is affecting them & how they don’t have the patience to deal with me. Recently my sister even hit me & told me I could get out of her house & go live in a box somewhere. Looking back on everything I’ve been through its no wonder I had a breakdown. I think the drugs were just the little added push I needed to topple completely over the edge. Life sucks
I’m sorry all of that has happened to you. You see an NP. Do you see a therapist also?
Yeah I see a therapist but she’s condescending & I don’t care for her much. I’ve tried to switch therapists twice but I keep getting urged to give my current one a chance. I’ve stuck with her so far but on the days I have to go see her I get so stressed out & fearful 
Sounds like what I went through, I had doctors who were confident enough to call my symptoms psychotic and put me on APs.
Look up internal hallucinations. Most references to this correspond it with external auditory hallucinations. I don’t understand why people here say they can’t diagnose schizophrenia but are okay with saying that it’s just anxiety or a bad trip. Not either/or but can be both.
In any case please look for social services to help you get medical care. Luckily Obamacare has not been repealed yet, Medicaid is still a very real and viable option for getting mental healthcare.
Be your own advocate, fight for your rights as a patient. Get the help you need.
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The wall of text at the beginning means you are unlikely to have schizophrenia.
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I’m surprised anyone managed to read it
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Why does my “wall of text” indicate that? I don’t understand. I have read plenty of posts here from people who have an official diagnosis that have been what some might consider excessively wordy. Infact a few replies I have gotten from people in this very topic are a bit lengthy.
Well I’m grateful that quite a few managed.
Normally, when you’re acutely ill with schizophrenia, your negative and cognitive symptoms are too severe for you to be able to write (or even, in some cases, read) posts that are that long.
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It takes a lot of effort for me & makes my feelings of “Brain fog” worse. Sometimes it makes me agitated but I’ve always been a bit verbose, it’s just part of my personality I guess.
It’s a sign that your negative and cognitive symptoms, if you have any, are not very severe. It’s a valid point that it indicates you are not acutely ill with schizophrenia. Personality does not trump schizophrenia. When I was prodromal, my negative symptoms were so bad that I would sit and lie in bed all day and not go to the fridge to get food because I couldn’t muster the willpower to get up, even though I was starving. I barely went outside of my room, sometimes not for days. I couldn’t read more than a paragraph before I needed a break. I didn’t clean and almost never showered or changed clothes. I think you are underestimating how severe the loss of function from this illness usually is.
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I did read everything you posted here @Melimel. I am not a doctor. Just someone with sz who occasionally uses this online support group. I hope you do not have sz. It is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. You are keen to know more about whether or not you have sz, but the best way is to consult a psychiatrist. They are experts on these kinds of things. They can assess you dispassionately and with care,
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I never eat anymore, I’ve lost about 30 pounds in 2 months. I barely shower, I’ve managed to do my laundry once in 2 months. I don’t brush my hair or clean. I don’t do anything at all. My level of functioning has severely declined from what it used to be & only seems to be getting worse. My moods are so weird. I can’t watch TV or listen to music or do anything without feeling…uncomfortable? I don’t know I can’t explain it. I literally don’t do anything all day other than read this forum or call my mother randomly throughout the day in hysterics crying telling her I wish I had a time machine & could take it all back
Yeah I don’t understand why some seem to be so dismissive of me. It really upsets me but there isn’t anything I can do about it. I don’t know if what I have is some type of schizophrenia or not. All I know is something happened to me & I changed & now I experience everything differently & it is severely impeding my ability to function & I am absolutely terrified & in s constant state of distress & nobody seems to empathize with that.
I think you should reread some of these comments. Nobody is saying they don’t empathize with you. They’re just saying you should trust the advice of all the medical professionals in your life. BPD has a way of making you feel like everyone is against you. That’s not true. People here are just trying to reassure you and ease your anxieties. Schizophrenia is an awful disease and everyone wants to make you feel better by pointing out that your symptoms don’t line up with schizophrenia. Your NP doesn’t think you have it. Your doctor doesn’t think you have it. Your therapist doesn’t think you have it. Your family doesn’t think you have it. People with schizophrenia don’t think you have it. At some point, you have to ask yourself why you’re so adamant that you do have it.
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I’m surprised that you haven’t mentioned this before now. If your loss of functioning is that severe, it’s strange to me that you are not more concerned about it than you appear to be. You could go see a psychiatrist. They could at least tell you if you have psychosis or not, and maybe whether your loss of function is due to a depressive episode, psychosis or something else. You haven’t mentioned much that suggests psychosis, but if seeing a psychiatrist can make you feel more at ease, you should do it. And with the new symptoms you keep mentioning in your post, this is quickly getting too confusing for us to be of any help in easing your anxiety. You have too many things to work on now to be distracted from them by things you can’t work on or things you don’t know if you can or not. I’m being blunt with you in my posts because I don’t think what you need is to keep worrying so much about this when you have other things to focus on. It’s too early to say if you have schizophrenia, but you might have psychosis or something else that a psychiatrist can help you with.
Hey, it’s good to come here for help. I think you are suffering a lot from lack of sleep. Not sleeping enough can cause a lot of symptoms. I would advise that you eat right, sleep right and then see how you feel and let us know then. You might just be psychotic