I have a friend who has been giving me unsolicited advice. He keeps telling me he had anxiety and he saw counseling for it and now he’s better. I told him schizophrenia and anxiety are not the same thing. I told him you can’t talk your way out of this and that I have this for life. Even after telling him that, he asked if I ever thought about telling my schizophrenia to “go away”. He also tried giving me work and school advice. I told him that a symptom of schizophrenia is lack of motivation, I don’t think he fully grasped what I’m saying. Do any of you deal with people like that in your life? How do you handle them?
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Yes it’s so annoying it just makes me feel more alone. If they can’t change their perception after an explanation I steer away from them.
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I agree. It is very annoying. He means well, I think, but it makes me feel more alone as you said. It makes me feel more like an outcast. His father is a psychologist so you’d think he wouldn’t be so ignorant.
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I tried to explain my anxiety and depression to this family friend and why I’m not contacting her but I still don’t think she gets it necessarily it pissses me off cos she treats me differently to the rest of family cis she thinks I don’t love her anymore. Watever
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I’m sorry to hear that 
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Thanks
I’m sorry you are going thru annoying stuff too
This condition is not easy one bit
Sorry for derailing ur previous thread BTW 
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It definitely isn’t easy one bit
No worries Butterflyy, no worries at all 
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Ya this happens. Most people don’t get it at all. Basically there are two camps, the type who think schizophrenics are just weak minded and those that are terrified of the illness and think we’re all psycho killers. There are a few odd folks who empathize better than others, and maybe I exaggerate when I say ‘most’, but a lot of people just don’t get it. Sz makes one realize there is much about our brains that is relatively out of our control.
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Don’t get affected by your friend.Its one of the worst thing for our illness if we are talked out of our meds.I didn’t even realise I was doing badly when I didn’t take them,Ditch your friend if he continue to do so
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I’m lucky in that regard. Most people don’t give me unsolicited advice. I do get suggestions about medication, but I asked for the feedback from a handful of people. What gets me is a friend that is telling me I need to forgive a mutual childhood friend for sexually assaulting me. We argued about it for a bit lately but now I’ve basically said, this is how and feel and please don’t expect me to change at all. He has not responded since.
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People that don’t understand people Iike us with this illness is hard to put into words — I tell them mine came from being sensitive as a kid and having been EXTREMELY scared at one point or another which came to trauma as an adult - seems like most people think we’re faking it for attention however this illness is ruthless and we deserve some respect … You can’t really dumb it down or break it apart …
But I guess I should say my issues came from my dad and a teacher, but I don’t know there were a lot of things that scared me as a kid
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How hard is it to understand “i hear voices constantly”? How hard is it to realize how harmful it would be to have voices following you around everywhere? I don’t get it.
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I don’t expect your friend to understand. I believe I had p docs that didn’t understand. I’m not saying that all p docs are like that but some didn’t really know it understand much about schiz. If only some of these people could spend some time inside your brain and see how it really is.
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