Hi everyone, sorry for bringing another one of these topics to the forum. I’ve been debating going to see a schizophrenia specialist for a schizophrenia evaluation ever since my last discharge from an inpatient psychiatric facility. I’m sorry, this might be long. I have a lot of symptoms to talk about.
I’ve been experiencing what I think are hallucinations, delusions, and otherwise since a very young age.
These are what I think are hallucinations:
I see shadow people, animals, full actual people, spiders and other bugs, random out of place objects (IE floating fire alarms or likewise), and sometimes I can tell that the object or thing isn’t real, but a lot of times I can’t. (For example, one meeting with my therapist, I thought she had brought in a therapy cat for the session and sat on the floor petting the cat. My therapist called my parents and said I needed to see a psychiatrist who could better help with psychosis. Hint, there was no cat.)
I hear things very frequently. People talking, calling my name, very loud noises like gunshots or cymbals, random whispering, banging and clashing, etc. I’m actually hard of hearing, and would not normally be able to hear these things. I ask every time if people around me heard the same noise, which they never do.
I also feel things that generally aren’t there. Sometimes I will wake up thinking that I have been stabbed through the chest with a spike, or have been impaled. I can feel it inside of my body, and also feel the wetness of blood under me or where I’m laying. Sometimes I can see it too. I frequently believe I am “attacked” by the shadow people / monsters that I see. I can feel them scratching and tearing at my arms and legs, sometimes choking me. (It turns out that in these episodes, I scratch and tear at my own skin. I have many scars from it.) I can feel things crawling on me, or trying to drill into my skin.
Sometimes I can smell things that aren’t there, like natural gas in a house as if there were a gas leak, or wet paint in a place that hadn’t been remodeled in years. I always have them inspected, and it turns out there’s never anything wrong.
I think I may suffer from delusions:
Sometimes it’s easier to tell that things I think or believe are not real, or are wrong, but it doesn’t change the fact that I have an extreme overarching feeling of doom and peril or am convinced that it could be real.
I have episodes where I believe everyone can read my mind, or that I can read everyone else’s thoughts and can hear them all talking about me in their minds. I know what everyone is saying, and that they’re all planning to kidnap or murder me and that I have to get away immediately.
I will believe people have broken into my house, and I call 911 and hide with a knife I keep in my room for such purposes.
I worship the goddess Bastet, who takes on a corporeal form as my housecat, nicknamed Biscuit so people don’t know that she is the goddess Bastet and try to kidnap her and use her power for their own selfish gain. She watches over me and protects me from the shadow monsters / creatures that occasionally try to attack me.
I am constantly under the belief that every single bad thing that happens, regardless of whether or not it is to me or someone else, is my fault and my punishment from the god Apep. Bastet fights Apep on my behalf.
Other miscellaneous things:
I’ve been forgetting a lot of things lately. I forget my home address, I forget my last name, I forget how to tie my shoes, I forget the motions of eating. I forget what words mean and how to spell them (very simple words, like “truck” or “river”). It’s taken me a long time writing this in the first place because of it. My medicine has helped with this, but it hasn’t completely gone away.
People tell me I have false memories of things, or memories of things that never happened. I am convinced that something happened in a particular way, or that something happened in general, but I’m told over and over again that that never happened or never existed. Even being shown proof of something happening completely differently, I feel like they’re lying to me or faking proof in order to tell me that what I remember isn’t real.
I don’t have a lot of capacity for empathy. I’m not really emotionally affected by things, other than feelings of extreme paranoia. Sometimes, I get very angry or agitated because of the paranoia.
I have family history of schizophrenia, and have had family hospitalized psychiatrically because of it. My positive symptoms (mainly hallucinations) started when I was young, around 5 or 6 years old.
I’ve been taking antipsychotic medication for a while now, and am taking 400mg of Seroquel and 5mg of Haldol, on top of 400mg Lamictal and 150mg Wellbutrin.
Should I seek a schizophrenia evaluation?
