Ever since I was very little, I’ve loved medicine. When I was 2 I used to open my parents medical reference book and look at the pictures, and now I read med school text books cover to cover for fun. So I’m no stranger to the hallmark symptoms of various mental illnesses. When I first started to hear voices, on the one hand I was terrified and had no idea what was happening. But the logical side of me knew immediately that paranoia and auditory hallucinations are most often symptoms of schizophrenia. So even though I was confused at first, I always knew from day one what I had. Have any of you either known immediately from prior medical knowledge or just from intuition that you were schizophrenic? And if you were self aware from the start did it help you control the severity of your symptoms? I believe that recognizing what was going on with me right away helped me to stay grounded and not give into the psychosis. Not trying to sound extra smart or anything, just sharing my experience and honestly curious if anyone else has felt the same
I imagine that it would be helpful to have insight from day one. Also, I would assume that hearing voices would be an easily identifiable symptom that something is wrong. To those like myself who don’t hear voices, the symptoms are nearly impossible to identify. I still doubt that I even have it sometimes. Part of why I came here is to sort of “admit it”. 
I had no idea what was gong on with me when things started to crumble away.
I was taken to child psychiatrist when I was young, but never diagnosed with Sz until I was 17 and in hospital.
I honestly thought people were after me… there was never a logical explanation
I’d just seen my sister become unwell with it. Still had no insight
Nah I was very much in denial anything was wrong with me. Hearing voices I just denied ever was anything unusual, I’m not sure what I thought about that.
Very creative with the princess Kenny avatar @PrincessKenny
I never would’ve connected the dots if I hadn’t started hearing voices, but even then it seems that it’s not very common for people to recognize they’re sick right away. I can understand that because it’s usually much harder to notice change in yourself than in others
I feel that it’s a transgender micro aggression. It’s not cool bro
Wait what???
@turningthepage haha thanks it just occurred to me to do that. And @Keithophrenia is referencing the latest South Park season lol political correctness is helping pop up adds take over the world
Oh come on you said you’d get my jokes/reference!
I’m never doing it again now! 
I knew from the minute that I started hearing voices that I had schizophrenia. I was able to talk myself down most of the time when I first got sick and was able to convince myself that I was just ill until I started wondering if schizophrenia was just a label that was slapped on people that had telepathic capabilities. I got extremely confused because I would hear many people say things to me in my head and then seconds later they would say those exact words out loud and it freaked me out. I got convinced that schizophrenia wasn’t actually an illness but that it was a label for people that had opened their third eye and developed psychic abilities. So, I ended up falling victim to the illness even though I knew at first that I was sick.
I dunno, I’m attracted to male----> fully female transsexuals, and women, maybe you were saying princesskenny was transgender…which wouldn’t hold any different to my sexual attraction. Confused me :/.
That’s very similar to how it was for me. I knew I had SZ right away but still gave in to any delusions that i had
Sucks when you know you have it and still fall for the paranoid thoughts and/or voices huh?
My MI started developing in my early teens. Didn’t have full blown psychosis until 25 though.
Yesssssss because the rational side of me gets frustrated like “what are you doing?! The government can’t read your mind!” And the sick part of me is like “Oh yes they can!” So not at all a split personality, but it’s like the moments of being lucid are spent agonizing over the way you think/act when your psychotic
Yes! Omg, I totally thought that the government was monitoring me! I thought that my ex who was a Freemason (they are heavily involved with the government if you aren’t familiar with them) was performing MK-Ultra (a government mind control experiment that the government did on U.S. citizens mainly in the 70’s) on me. I was convinced that I had schizophrenia all figured out and that it was a big government experiment that they did on random innocent people.
I told my friends I heard voices, and they knew I had sz…my friend said to me “well that could happen” when I said I heard voices, but I was still in denial about it.
I thought the government was reading my thoughts and the news stations were broadcasting them whenever I wasn’t watching. And when they caught on, they’d switch stations so I always had to have whichever station was playing my thoughts on tv. Sometimes I had to have Fox News on, other times CNN needed to be playing, etc. because as long as I was watching, they wouldn’t broadcast my thoughts because their plan would be ruined if I caught them.