Beginning of Schizophrenia

How did your symptoms start? What did you notice first?

When I was fifteen I started getting hit with this really crushing anxiety at school. I’d sit in class so scared I was afraid something would break. I thought there was something about the way I was sitting - something about my posture, that people thought was really weird and abnormal. I thought people were thinking that I was crazy for the way I was sitting, and they were thinking I was going to have to be taken to the mental hospital. Back then that was catastrophic to me.

1 Like

when i was in high school God started talking to me, guiding me and telling me things, for me it’s a spiritual battle, when they told me i had some incurable disease i never believed them, yet here i am on this site because i am having difficulties again and looking for what… don’t know only that it is comforting and anonymous

1 Like

I did not notice at all until I was medicated. Looking back it was paranoia.

1 Like

For a long time I just thought everyone herd voices. Then when I was about 13 when the voices started to make me feel depressed and it wasn’t long after that when i began to relize somthing was up. I was able to handle myself and keep it secret for 2 or 3 years till it was unbearable and u started to believe that my family and freinds secretly were trying to get rid of me, and someone was always watching me, and about then is when I decided to get checked out by school counselor.

1 Like

Yeah it started when I was a toddler, I thought this specific red car was following me everywhere, and took pictures of it. My mom thought it was me playing around. Then at 14 I thought everyone was telepathical. Then at 25 I had my first big episode and was hospitalized, diagnosed and medicated, I was 27

I thought I was spied on & being poisoned. That was 10 years ago, I was 24.

1 Like

I developed abnormal fears of my best friend and others as well. I noticed I had become unable to do the things I had set out to do. I withdrew from my family and picked up harmful habits such as fasting without instruction and not talking to anyone. My mind changed from being barely functional to being broken down without any ego barriers.

1 Like

It started with misinterpreting the Bible. I judged someone I care a lot for very harshly. I feel like what I said is still unforgivable to this day. Also had a strong impulse to do something I would never do to a person that I only feel love for.

1 Like

I can’t really explain it, the world went from 3d to 2d, from stereo to mono.

1 Like

it started with what my therapist refers to as the beginning stages where I was incredibly depressed but she thinks that may have to do more with my ptsd from the sexual abuse from when I was 6 to 10.

It started with whispering voices, while I was in college I experienced louder voices but they generally weren’t talking to me just about me. Then I dropped out of college and started working at a big name retail store. At first it wasn’t so bad, then I got into a car accident and hurt my back just before I started working third shift. After a month of recuperating I was finally allowed to go back to work. But the voices were worse. The taunted me, I was fired from that job due to hiding from the voices in the back between the clothes racks. a few months later I went into the hospital. I didn’t trust anybody but my partner and all food tasted poisoned.

while I was in the hospital, they told me to sign up for Medicaid and social security, that there wasn’t much hope for me.

1 Like

Got really into the occult, thought I could summon spirits. My grades slipped, and my personality completely changed; I became very withdrawn. Then I had a major breakdown which ended in catatonia and that was what I was hospitalized for. Turns out the spirits were all hallucinations!

1 Like

I thought it was explained well

1 Like

Thanks guys, for your responses. They are helpful. More are welcome!

When i was 17 i joined the u s army. Soon i had a top secret clearance and this only made paranoia worse, if anything it enCouraged it and it didn’t help that my job required me to be alone in a vault day after day, was first in a psychiatric ward in the army for being suicidal, it was humiliating and kept hush hush, I reenlisted, was part of desert storm. Got out because God told me to, for me, paranoia was so strong i could not seek help, only after I injured myself did my wife beg me to seek counsel And then the jerk sent me to the stAte hospital, a nightmare but I denied voices, denied all to get out as quickly as possible, took a month and ruined us, filed bankruptcy, moved out of state and tried to work. 3 more hospitalization sensed my attempts at work. Every time, my goal was to escape and so I lied to get out, medicines made me a zombie, still do, then i was on disability for a long time and had a psychiatrist i grew to trust in a standoffish way and still denied voices to keep but two more hospital visits, it’s difficult admitting a need for help, it’s extremely difficult…

1 Like