I frequent a religious organization in my city. There I contacted one of the priest for advice on my schizophrenia. After months visiting him once or twice a week, he attempted the following actions that I found curious.
First, we establish that my hallucinated characters are present, that is I see them right that moment. Second, the priest asks me to describe the character that I see. His questions were along the following lines. Is it male or female (female in my case)? What colour of hair? How is the nose shaped? Is there lipstick? What kind of dress? Is there earrings? If no, are there scars from piercing in the ears? What kind of shoes?
Eventually he stops me and tells me the following. I wasn’t looking at the spot where I supposedly see the character. Therefore, I draw descriptions from my imagination. Therefore the character is a product of my imagination and is not real.
For me personally, this is only the quarter of the entire story that is still ongoing. I won’t go into details unless requested. The important part is that experiment, as he called it.
Most if not all schizophreniacs struggle to understand that the threat and paranoia that they perceive is completely false. I wonder if this tiny trick I described might help someone.