Wondering if anyone else felt they were able to hide the severity of psychosis from those around them?
Even at my worst I knew what I was "supposed’ to believe and how I was meant to be acting. So, essentially, I was falling apart and no one knew. Just two weeks ago I had a therapist tell me not to go outside at night and let my imagination get carried away. I was trying to tell her about my delusions and paranoia but she chalked it up to an over active imagination.
Just wondering if anyone else has experience with this. Can I even really be schizophrenic if I know other people wouldn’t believe in my delusions? I can udually reality check enough to differentiate between reality and hallucinations,- is that normal?
Sorry, this question might be random but I’m new to all of this.
Well i passed off wrapping my bed in tinfoil and mylar, making a faraday cage, as saying the wifi and radio waves give me headaches. In reality i was in deep psychosis and know now that nothing can help against my delusions. Tho i still wear a mylar hat sometimes.
Ive kept my fears hidden so my kids wont learn to be afraid of the world like I am. I told my daughter my diagnosis after she turned 18. She knew I am paranoid but didn’t realize I had sz.
I was completely delusional for my first two years with this disease. Then I had 6 months or so of middle ground where I seemed to be in the same place as you are now. Then the delusions went away. It seems like you still have some insight and your doctor recognizes this, which might be why she’s minimizing it.
The sad truth is, when you’re a high functioning schizophrenic you have to act in many ways like someone who does not have the disorder. That’s the goal of most schizophrenics I think. Doesn’t mean you can’t come here and vent or reality check, I did reality checking for several months before I stopped believing strange things.
I think the way I dress and lack of hygiene is an indicator. I can control myself. My family can tell based on my thoughts and my beliefs. But I blend in very well. It’s an invisible disease. I don’t act out. I look normal. But I wear the same clothes every day and I smell sometimes. I’m very aware of this. Sometimes I wear jackets when it’s warm and it reminds me of schizotypal PD because of what I’ve read about them being eccentric.
I try to avoid going outside and seeing people unless I am clean most of the time. It’s hard. I hate smelling but it’s the negatives and lack of caring and poor motivation.
I sound crazy online though. I guess my doctors think I’m crazy too.
When I am really stressed out or dissociated I am known to have panic attacks or PTSD like feelings. I can act a little funny. It hasn’t happened in a while and was worse early on. Reality looked fake like it wasn’t real or didn’t exist. TV looked more real to me. I am improving. Caffeine seems to worsen these symptoms.
Early on I wore boots with gym shorts and perhaps a jacket. I looked strange. I embarassed my brother. I didn’t even notice. I was looking for comfort.
I hid it pretty well for years. The thing is, I acted very normally, I could go out in public and no one looked at me twice or gave me funny looks for years. I always sounded rational and the majority of people who I met or saw could not tell by looking at me I was mentally ill and nobody could tell by talking to me. I had psychiatrists and therapists tell me that if they didn’t know from my medical record that I had paranoid schizophrenia, they would never have been able to tell.
On the other hand I still suffered from bad symptoms, especially in the beginning. Also, I wasn’t even trying to hide it, it just came natural.
I didn’t walk around, afraid people would find out because nobody could.
But you can’t cheat mother nature. I was lucky enough no one could tell, but I still led a life where I lived in mental health housing, I still saw psychiatrists and therapists and took medication. My symptoms could still get horrible.
Nowadays, people occasionally catch on that I have some kind of mental problems. I hate when I’m in some store shopping or going through a drive-thru to get a drink and things start out alright with the cashier but then I get that look where it dawns on them somethings amiss. Sometimes they look at me like I’m crazy but usually not in a mean way. But I hate that dawning look.
Lots of people at work know but no one gives me a hard time. After 7 years, they’re pretty used to me and I’m friendly and I smile and say a lot of the same stupid s*it I say on here. So that kind of smooths over any potential problems or awkwardness and defuses most situations.
In my case, I kept my psychosis hidden for years. I did not see the things that I believed as delusions or the things I experienced as hallucinations, but I knew that nobody would believe what I believed if I talked about it, so I kept my mouth shut about it all and just tried to act normally. Eventually it became impossible for me to act normally and I ended up in the hospital. The doctors at the time never asked me to describe all of my experiences so they never knew how far it went (and it went really far), and they only called my condition psychosis NOS, not schizophrenia.
This made me feel like I did not need to stick with treatment for more than a year, and I went psychotic again once I stopped. Once again did not talk about what I believed or experienced and just tried to act normal, but eventually I couldn’t and my family convinced me to get checked out. I guess my behaviour was less severe at the time so I didn’t end up as an inpatient again, but I started treatment again and got a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Anyway, I would say that if you’re not prone to talking about what you believe or experience, and you don’t think you have a problem, you could keep your schizophrenia hidden for a while, but probably eventually your behaviour would get worse and force you into the mental health system.
I was bored and did some experimenting. It has fallen out from behind the cushion on the couch twice now, so don’t try hiding your schizophrenia there.
I ‘kind of’ knew my psychotic episodes were not entirely real, and never talked about them with anyone, and kept all my strange thoughts to myself. I went through two years of occasional psychotic experiences before my parents took me to a psychiatrist, and only then because I was socially isolating. I had a number of suicidal thoughts before this happened and my visit to the doctor might have saved my life.
Discussing the specifics of delusional beliefs with other (close) people may not be a good idea, but having them know you are experiencing them helps them to help you.
I probably look like a completely normal person to strangers on the street, bus, and in the shop, but in reality something else is controlling my body now. It feels like my body is moving on its own; occasionally the “spirit” that possesses my body does things I would not do like showing my tongue when it finds something funny, flails with my arms, screams, or my mouth talks to me, but for some reason that spirit avoids doing those things when I’m in a public place and other people could see this behavior.
I like to think I hide it well, I am currently in med school, and my friends dont know. The key is the mindset. For me what I did was envelop the whole WWJD thing, but instead of jesus, because most of my core belief system and understanding of the disease is tied to religion I came up with what would richard branson do. I though how would he spend his time, what kind of thoughts would he think, how would he be creative and cunstructive with his time. Then I began to catch myself and my loose imagination and focused to reshape it around social norms and noticed my outbreaks were less ans less severe over time until eventally I was able to fucntion agin normally in society. Took a few years but I never gave up and before when things were bad they were really really bad
I hid my severe psychosis for about 10 years because I was terrified that harm would come to my family and myself if I told anyone about what I was seeing or thinking. As a result I went undiagnosed and untreated and lived a life of hell for those 10 years. Meanwhile my family had suspicions but were unable to convince me to accept any help.
I think I’ve always been regarded as being somewhat ‘off’ in terms of what many people would regard as ’ normal’ . It undoubtedly explains the bullying I was subjected to as a teenager .
As my sister wrote in the supporting letter for my ASD assessment :
It was around this time that he was badly bullied at boarding school due to not being a ‘normal’ kind of teenage lad.