Did you suspect you had schizophrenia before you were diagnosed, and if so, did you try to avoid the diagnosis?
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Yeah I knew before. I semi-knew for a couple years before hospilization. I didn’t avoid getting diagnosed, but I didn’t seek medical attention.
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Semi-knew means being 17 years old and having an idea but not being completely sure because I’m not a doctor, and didn’t really know what schizophrenia was, and also not thinking clearly.
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first full psychosis I just thought I was supposed to “tell my secrets” to the therapist to see Amelia…(from the book) from out of my coma world…after I got out they put me on meds, but I told myself that I just had “a mental breakdown”. it took about four months before I was fully psychotic again and that time I stayed delusional for about seven months.
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I didnt even know what schizophrenia was before I got diagnosed. I had a friend who said he had it and I figured he hallucinated but I didnt know anything else
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I thought I had it before I was diagnosed and read a little about it.
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No, it was surprise. I was in a prodromal phase for a year or two before I got diagnosed and on some level I knew something was wrong but I had always been weird and thought all the stuff going on in my life was weird but I didn’t think I was mentally ill. I wasn’t hallucinating and my delusions were minimal and I had always been paranoid on some level so I just accepted my mental state as normal (normal for me).
When I went into my first psyche ward I think it was a shock to everybody. I was seeing a therapist at the time but didn’t consider myself mentally ill even though the way I grew up, seeing a therapist was weird. I just kind of went with the flow and talked to her once a week and we had great conversations. She was young and pretty and friendly so I enjoyed going. Then one day, the head psychiatrist called a meeting between me, my parents, my therapist and him and after about 15 minutes he said, “He needs to go into a psyche ward immediately.” I remember my therapist started crying because she hadn’t realized how bad off I was mentally. It was inside my first psyche ward that I knew something was drastically wrong.
I was released from the psyche ward to go live in Soteria House but I was still in denial that anything was really wrong with me. I remember distinctly thinking I was a genius and that I was perfect. It took about two months before I accepted my diagnosis as schizophrenia. It wasn’t a big earthshaking event, my new life inside Soteria went on and I was still going out in public regularly and doing things with my family.
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I alllllmost went to Soteria House I remember now…I also wanted to contact Dr. Patch Adams after seeing the movie with Robin Williams.
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Fascinating read man. I wonder how it made you feel seeing your psychologist tear up when she realised you were more sick than she realised? That would have impacted me if that happened to me. I remember seeing my mum cry because of me fked me up. She was so stern and rarely showed emotion most of my childhood until then. And then later she called me a "fking psycho" (out of stress in the moment) which made me feel horrible beyond comprehension. I was an only child to a single mother, so what my mum thought/said to me always had a big impact on me.
@77nick77
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I dont know why some of that font came out more bold.
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I felt bad for her and wanted to tell her it was not her fault but I didn’t say it.
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I did not expect that i had schizophrenia at all until long after a long stay at a psych ward as a 17 year old. I even knew people with sz before i got unwell. I never really thought about it much though until i recovered from my first episode.
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I read about it when i was a teen. I suspected but I didn’t know for sure. Everything just seemed so normal for me. The voices, the hallucinations. I never really questioned it. Part of me didn’t care if I had it, because I planned to kill myself in my teens. I never thought it mattered.
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I was in huge denial that I had schizophrenia at first then it was obviously pointed out to me a couple years later when the voices came up
It was like the Dr could see the storm brewing in advance
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I didn’t know i had sza at all until my 20s cuz everyone told me in my teens that i was just bipolar. I thought sz was having multiple personalities when i was growing up. Things were also complicated with a BPD diagnosis cuz i started self harming when i was 12. I think my teens were more prodromal, and professionals didn’t want to give me a sza diagnosis when i was a teen cuz i was highly functional and they thought the diagnosis would be detrimental. Then i ended up in Florida State Hospital right after i graduated high school cuz i was psychotic as sh*t and seriously hurt myself thinking i was helping the world. That’s when the sza diagnosis came.
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No as I was experiencing anosognosia and had zero insight
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When i first got told i was in psychosis and that none of it was real i was in complete denial. I actually thought the doctors were in on it too and once you got that label it was like a green light for them to do whatever they wanted to me and nobody would believe me. When i look back to before my first episode i think it was pretty obvious that i was a bit “different” to normal people.
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The whole year leading up to my first hospitalization is kind of blur to me because I was so detached from reality. I’m pretty sure the answer is no, I didn’t know I had it before being diagnosed. I was 17 and what made my therapist urge hospitalization is that I thought I was getting messages through a dictionary. I was really convinced. People always tell me these days that I have a lot of insight (the psychiatric term, not the philosophical or spiritual sense) but I certainly had low insight back then.
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I started hearing voices on the job. I don’t know if I thought of the word schizophrenia, even though I read; I never promised you a Rose garden, years before. I can’t remember how long it took to see a doctor. I think I worked at least 4 more years.
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Yes, but I was still in denial. I knew because of delusions of grandeur
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