Today one of the things I talked about with my therapist was whether or not I may be in the prodromal stages of schizophrenia. I am very scared of this being the case. She said many with prodromal sz will begin experiencing symptoms of psychosis around late high school. I have experienced strange things my entire life since as far back as I can remember. I have had beliefs that would be classified as delusions since forever. However when I was 16 or 17 was when my beliefs became paranoid and I descended into what was either a paranormal attack or psychosis. I’ve talked about it before on here, but it was bad enough to where it caused me to develop PTSD.
BUT my symptoms eventually got BETTER because I gained INSIGHT. I learned that not everything I experienced may be real and that I might have a problem. I made it a full time job to find coping mechanisms, develop reality checks, etc…senior year of hs was bad but much better than junior year. Freshman year it was completely manageable and not bad at all…summer it got bad…and the next summer…but it never went back to that level it was at again and still has not gotten back to that level…
Full blown schizophrenia in women doesn’t typically begin until mid to late 20’s or even 30’s. I’m only 20. I don’t think there has been any schizophrenia in my family, but I wouldn’t really know because mental health is a taboo topic and I barely know anything about any of my relatives past my grandparents. And I don’t even know much about them, to be honest. But hopefully it’s not been in my family before?? Because then it would be unlikely I had it right?? I’m terrified of completely breaking off with reality one day. My therapist said for prodromal schizophrenia it was best to start treatment early, which could possibly prevent it from ever going full blown…but if I’m not schizophrenic I don’t want to start antipsychotics! You know?
Anyways I’m just stressed. I wish my therapist would have just told me that no, I definitely did not have prodromal schizophrenia.