No way… I was a weird kid, but the downfall of my life happened after first break and/or medication.
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Don’t honestly know. I was always the lesser twin. Don’t know how I would have been considered had it been different.
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Nope. I was a very resilient child. I was very happy despite a dysfunctional household until around age 15 when I started getting bullied occasionally at school. Up until then I was healthy and normal.
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Had autism since a child but schizoaffective since 25 so about 7 years. I really didnt start hearing voices until my mom was on hospice at 28. So symptoms have progressed over time.
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I have gotten worse as I have gotten older. Kind of interesting, like while I feel myself becoming more whole/mature I also am dealing with stronger delusions/hallucinations and emotions.
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Yes it built up over time right from birth
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I began hearing voices at the age of eight.
It wasn’t until my mid-20’s that they became hostile and overwhelming, and I started having regular manic phases and psychotic breaks.
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I didn’t know I was mentally ill until I tried to make it in the Army at 23. One thing lead to another and I received my first diagnosis: Schizoid features, Dysthymic Disorder, social isolation. After I was honorably discharged, the first VA Psychiatrist told me I actually had SZ and needed AP medication. But I’ve always been this way my whole life. So I’ve been mentally ill my whole life but didn’t know about it until my early adulthood and tried to make it in the employment world.
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Same. I was a bit odd but nobody knew the extent of it.
Hell, neither did I at times.
Now after psychosis, my brain is much like scrambled eggs, so there’s that 
.
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The employment world is where my paranoia and anxiety really showed up and made me think I was mentally ill.
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What I discovered is that the employment world functions conducive to neurotypicals (for lack of a better term) in terms of mental speed, mental comprehension, mental integration. The whole design was developed by neurotypicals, and thus, it would make sense that 99.5% of the world population can naturally integrate and even excel to higher-ranked positions. There’s that approximate 0.5% (I estimate) that cannot integrate and probably get put on lifetime disability income. I once spoke with a mental health professional who compared it to trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Just doesn’t work, at least for someone like me.I’m just missing things like neurotransmitter supply, neurotransmission speed/memory/data. I’m either too fast (Bipolar) or too slow (Schizophrenia). I’m not part of reality. It appears that I also need to unblock dopamine receptors, like d2. But … blessed are the sick?
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I was really bullied when I was 9 years old and in the 3rd grade. I was a normal kid until that. They finally put me in another school when I was 11, and I wasn’t bullied there.
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I was in competitive and toxic environments. I now work in massage therapy and don’t have paranoia or anxiety anymore. But, you’re right, it seemed like these environments bothered me much more than the neurotypicals.
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I feel like something made me extremely inhibited, also my mother could be extremely critical. When I was 33, I realized I had been food poisoned quite a bit. When I avoided it, it helped a lot of problems, but then I developed psychotic symptoms 2 years later. I don’t know if it’s associated with being cautious about food.
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I was 11 when I realized I was depressed. I didn’t even know what the word depressed really meant. When I was a small child I dissociated a lot and went to my “imaginary land” in my head, to escape life, and anxiety and depression. I lived in my own fantasy world. I’m not surprised I ended up with schizophrenia later in life. My imaginary fantasy world turned tainted and sick. The place that used to give me comfort and feeling of safe, turned into a place of anguish and horror.
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I didn’t tink of myself as mentally ill until adulthood. All I knew was that I was different from everyone else to the point where I sometimes thought of myself as being an alien stranded on the wrong planet.
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I feel like I had far more anxiety and depression as a kid than is normal. I also think my parents weren’t very equipped to be parents. They weren’t physically abusive or vicious, but they just didn’t really fulfil my emotional and social needs.
I’m British but I’ve always had with a slight American accent because most of my language was picked up from American TV.
I also felt like I didn’t know how to communicate as a kid and young teen, because so often my parents would not listen or not understand what I was trying to express to them.
I read once on here that children with high anxiety often develop psychosis so that fits the bill for me.
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This is the same way that I View things with my Mom. When she was raised, children were seen not heard. And in a way, expected to raise themselves. That was her background, so it only makes sense she would be ill-equipped to contribute to my emotional health.
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