Most accounts I read/hear about people with schizophrenia or other psychosis-related conditions describe the person as having been a “normal, ordinary person” up until the onset of their illness.
My own experience is of having been a “strange child” from the earliest days that I recall and of having what I now understand to be auditory hallucinations on an occasional basis from around 4 or 5 years old onwards, usually along the lines of hearing my name being called or hearing someone say something to me when there was no-one around. At around 6 I remember seeing the figures on a poster on my bedroom wall walking off the poster and marching along the wall towards me, holding weapons and with malicious intent. I also, from my earliest memories onwards, had extremely vivid and strange dreams every night, usually nightmares, and of such a bizarre disturbing nature that I still vividly remember many of them to this day (I’m now in my mid thirties).
I initially assumed all this to be normal but when mentioning it to other children at school I soon discovered, to my surprise, that I was apparently the only one having such experiences and by naively sharing such things I soon gained the reputation of a “weird” person, which led to a lot of social isolation and ostracism, which merely compounded such things and gave rise from when I was around 9 years old to various obsessive-compulsive behaviours and occasional self-harm plus a thankfully failed and poorly thought out suicide attempt when I was 10.
I’ve always had a very strong and active imagination and always been prone to (and often enjoyed) imagining strange and surreal things. I suspect this, and some of the other things I’ve just spoken about, may be true for quite a few people who go on to become schizophrenic or psychotic, as I’ve seen it described by some as not only “an illness of perception” but also “an illness of imagination.”
So without going on any further about myself, I’d be interested to hear if anyone else on here had incidents and signs in childhood that could have foreshadowed to some extent the “condition” they were diagnosed with later in life? It could be that you also had occasional hallucinations and ultra-vivid imagination and nightly bizarre disturbing dreams or something else…or you may have truly never had anything like that until adulthood, which is perfectly fine too!
I used to have olfactory and tactile hallucinations as a child. I would smell things that others didn’t smell all the time. Food smelled bad, people smelled bad… at one point I couldn’t eat, I always covered my nose with my palms to not smell things or I would hold my breath. I was so scared of the olfactory hallucinations for some reason. I would also perceive random smells, aromas and scents/fragrances. I also would feel things like insects crawling on me or strange sensations as well. I had problems sleeping at night too. I would hear sounds and have really bad and evil thoughts only at night. I knew something was weird because I was the only one at home who had issues with sleeping.
I had strange beliefs when I was young before sz. I thought one of my tshirts brought me luck by getting 90-100% in my exams. I did have 90-100% but it wasn’t related to the tshirt. Its like if it gave me confidence but in fact its a lack of confidence.
Psychosis brought my self confidence down bcz I can’t trust my mind with all the insulting voices. Now on meds its just slightly better bcz I have severe negative symptoms.
@Rosette Regarding having “really bad and evil thoughts only at night” as a child, I also as a young child (around age 3 to 6) used to be kept awake at night by strong intrusive thoughts, which in my case were compelling me to stab or kill my parents and pets during the night…for some reason I felt this was “God” challenging me to do it…but it was an upsetting idea as I would never wish to harm my parents or animals, so thankfully I never acted on it and eventually it faded away. But aside from that, I’ve always had a lot of difficulty falling asleep at night as my brain usually takes a long time to switch off. At the moment I take Mirtazapine antidepressant and although it does barely anything for me it does however almost always cause me to fall asleep within an hour or so of taking it and stay deeply asleep for several hours, so that partly solves my sleeping difficulties for now.
To me with hindsight it’s clear why I had psychosis and sza after everything that has happened. I’m also 90% sure that my dad had sz or at least psychotic symptoms so I was doomed from the start lol. But hey at least the raiders are finally in LV
I think I may have experienced depression as a child, occasionally. But I never had any type of psychotic symptoms and I have strong positive symptoms now.
I remember having hallucinations when i was young but not many. I had an imaginary fantasy animal companion. T
When i was a teen i became severely depressed and anxious. Developed sza when i turned 20.
@Aziz It was only in my early childhood that I felt intrusive thoughts pressuring me to do such things. I have never actually been violent in my life. I took antipsychotics (first Olanzapine and then Amisulpride) for a year from 2010-2011 but chose to stop them due to the horrendous tiredness and exhaustion they caused daily. The mental health professionals understandably didn’t want me to stop them - and the withdrawal process was indeed unpleasant - but I couldn’t take such exhaustion anymore. Thankfully it turned out I didn’t really need to keep taking them anyway, as the symptoms for which they were originally prescribed were not particularly there anymore. It’s possible I may be re-prescribed an antipsychotic soon due to a current relapse in my condition but my Community Mental Health Team currently seems very incompetent; I did a separate post about that yesterday.
I started having symptoms at 9, but I have always been weird.
When I was 6, I didn’t come home from school, and my mother was very concerned, so the village arranged a search party. They found me lying in a ditch, talking to myself.
At 12 I had religious delusions and kept insisting we had ghosts in the house.
Well, my mind was a mess since very early too, since a kid yeap. I also was very very unhappy and maybe even back then, i had some intellectual deficits. But i was very smart in some other ‘‘limited areas’’… I also had a suicidial ideation since early. With the age, i had my evil thoughts too I also was hypoboulic, which means that i had no the energy to act neither the motivation or the inspiration or even the positive feelings… All this led me to isolation, so now that i want my mental health back, its very hard… I try to pardon myself some things now, but sometimes i just cant… I am not sure anymore if all this comes from my aggressive father, who was maybe ill too… Tbh, i guess its genetic in my case …
Oh, @Rivka, so you are without meds now if i got it right? I hope the best for you on this then I guess i endure the side effects of mines too now…