Is sz a physical or a spiritual disease?

do you think we have a soul and that it is damaged some how or do you think that schiz is a physical disease like a broken leg or toothache?

i know this sounds strange but i just cant see it being physical because you cant actually see the damage and even in a mri scan when it shows differences in our brain scans i cant help thinking that in order for our brains to get like that we must have damaged our souls or our souls have been damaged in some way or our spirit.

our soul or spirit is our thoughts and how we think like the way our brain is wired and how electrical impulses flow through our brain, our centre not the neural network but what flows through it, do you know what i mean?

I think SZ is a physical (biological) disease affecting the mind, but also touching the soul, but I don’t think it’s spiritual disease. Chemical imbalances in the brain brought about by stress and weakness in genes that affect perceptions and emotions. One can still be religious or spiritual with SZ, sometimes it helps to strengthen the mind. But also one’s spirituality can be affected. I know because I am a practising Muslim. There’s a fine line between soul and mind but I believe SZ is biologically based not spiritual.

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I swear to you, even as a child I could pick up on spirits and the unseen - I was and still am hypersensitive, I think that it could be both a physical disease on some chemical level and a spiritual illness or disorder - it is very mysterious even to scientists and doctors

I believe it is a physical disease. Before my dx I saw a psychologist for almost 5years who tried to cure me with cbt and hypnotherapy. When I was very ill he asked me if I was getting any better. I told him that my mind was getting worse so he then said he will send me to someone who can help me physically. I’ve prayed,the psychologist prayed for me, the church prayed for me but nothing helped. It was only when I was introduced to antipsychotics that I experienced some relieve from my symptoms. Today I have more trust and faith in modern medicine than in my prior religious and spiritual beliefs that is why I feel that sz is a physical disease.

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I believe it is a mental malady.

Could there be more to what we think we know? Absolutely.

I know I’ve experienced some things that simply defy explanation.

But then you can’t exclaim this kind of open mindedness to others without people who think they’re being rational coming along and saying “No your wrong and that’s a scientifically proven fact!” As if science has accomplished the task of explaining everything already.

That said I do not believe my friend Jon is spiritually sponsored by a diety named Void. I believe he has visions of such things but that does not make them real.

Could there be a spiritual dimension to some of these things we may experience? Sure.

But really, who knows.

added
An example of these “experiences that defy explanation” is my foreseeing the car accident I had in 2010 in a series of visions I had in 2007. It was during a weekly community meeting on the therapeutic community farm I was living on at the time. These visions came to me and I was describing them as they came…in a motel room with an unknown girl with dark hair. Haven’t slept…so…so tired. Still drunk from night before…gotta go…huge building with golden roof…the sun shines off the roof and the glare hurts my eyes…I’m swearing at it…etc…envisioned the entire day, morning to night of my car accident.

The only thing I was wrong about was that I thought we drove off a bridge while in reality we crashed right before the bridge and narrowly missed going into the ocean. But how did this all come to me in a vision if there is not more to what we think we know? I tell you it did and then years later actually happened.

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Your mind and your spirit are not separate from your body. They are united and interact. The task for everyone is to get them in harmonious balance. There is a feedback effect between them all. That’s the way I see it.

I think my mind was invaded basically, whoever did it has even physically harmed me twice.

We don’t have souls, we don’t have spirits, there isn’t anything seperate from the body that we are.

We are bodies given life by what they call the spirit, living souls but still mortal bodies.

A soul is only consciousness, but our soul is mortal, our bodies are our souls.

i believe we choose our lives, our suffering, our pain…
take care

Must be a blessing to it because we all have it.

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Perhaps our souls are weaker and we are more susceptible to the presence of evil. Maybe it’s not that were weaker but maybe were just special. It probably is just the result of bad chemistry and brain structure. I’m pretty much atheist although I hear the devil when I smoke weed. Curse my Christian upbringing

Both…this is really just a sick joke.

My nervous breakdown happened to me after a wealthy friend was bragging about hurting her other friends, scaring them badly including some who developed PTSD/schizo and then let her sex abuser use the girls for anything they would do…Now I have heard the voices every waking minute for 10 years, medicated or not as this woman’s family males stalked me, including my seeing them leaving my home and contents were ruined exactly as threatened. My neighbors saw the trespassers too but refused to help with police as they were doing a little drug thing…stalking charges, harassment and restraining orders are almost useless anyway…Other victims have been bothered by this group for 30 years including some of the women who have been beaten bad enough to need hospital care after the family abuser jumped out of the bushes as their homes…Some of these victims tried to follow orders from the abusers to bother new victims (called gang or cause stalking), trespass/vandalize but I know the torment goes on for these poor people who refuse to talk to new victims and/or cops for any protection, thus keeping this group of people still harming new women through online dating & family sex abuse victims who don’t want to deal with it any longer & give abuser new women to hurt…

As far as a spiritual disease, you will meet a lot of screwed up Christians who have went through pastor counseling and are left nutty…Many of these folks are closet schizo who follow orders from the voices called gang stalking/cause stalking and will harass specific strangers about something private…including gangs of kids in city surrounding strange adults to harass them about getting a disability check…Some of these people are screwed up worse, stealing, property crimes and will harass customers/coworkers and ruin transactions at work. Some of the non-denominational churches and pentacostals do advise the parishioners to act in this manner and mistreat people…Do google Gang and cause stalking, you are better off knowing this stuff. Mental care refuses to discuss this or help victims, calling it delusional even, which causes the confused to go insane and frequently self-harm…You cannot get angry with your mental care staff or they will forcably hospitalize you at your own expense for months for attitude adjustments…If you don’t like your pdoc’s approach, change doctors quietly.

Souls…some people are really so screwed up by this mess, they are the undead. I don’t mean paganisms, demonically possessed. There is no such thing except a terribly sick joke at work here and a lot of profiteering from the meds/psych care…There are a lot of battered and weary people suffering here and a lot of anger over this so they are soul-less, numb zombies. Some cities do operate like you are either an aggressor or a victim so things are hard …Some of the people who are submissive to the voices will even take demands from voices to date a specific person with intent to harm by battery, cheating, financial frauds…there is a lot of abuse that isn’t that noticeable because to get that relationship, they had to ruin victim’s employment. It is toughest being a single female as you will be targeted for potential sex partner, domestic house help or place to stay by the worst of peoples. The gang stalking verbal harassment, the sexual harassment by nutty male coworkers who do not mind ruining you and the trespassing at your home are worse when you are a female alone. Do not spend all you make and only own basic belongings…frequent approaches to winning a relationship include breaking everything you own numerous times or getting you in trouble at work so unemployment will be denied…Keep the money in the bank…

To spot the wrong people in social situations…1. They contradict themselves or do 180 on topics denying previous statements. 2. They try too hard to make friends. 3. They tell too many stories with so much info missing, it is implausible…The truth will scare you when you find out the rest of the story. 4. These kind brag about doing illegal things to people. 5. Their friends look fine for a while, then they start to taunt you about things and appear two-faced like a taciturn. If you see the group turn on another new person & person is upset-able, leave. Traveling with strangers is worst situation you can put yourself into – men will drop off a woman who won’t sleep with them and some abusers will take you to another police jurisdiction to hurt you where cops do not care and your family cannot help. In new social situations, you are better off keeping your last name private or use fake last name for a while and use email not containing your name or any username that can be googled…Do not discuss where you work…self-employed handles it. If you see anything like this, you should not return phone calls, text, emails or answer door to the group. DO NOT acknowledge anything you see or hear that is wrong there…Some of these kind will stalk you, and you will have tell them you want no more contact and I hope for your sake they leave you alone… Moving may be only solution but you will probably have a lot of strangers say something nutty to you, gang stalking you, for a while to remind you of whoever you met…The ladies groups are the safest places to socialize…even churches can be really unokay places if some of the members are abusers and rest of the congregation are submissive or silent.

Psycho-somatic is very real…You can have a lot of unpleasant tactile hallucinations including touch without any cause, bugs crawling, wind knocked out of you, stabbing pain for seconds, blurry vision, heart palpitations, orgasms…Muscle cramps, twitches…Getting upset and remaining upset will make you physically sick for a while sometimes…Complaining to a doctor can make things worse. The only people who remain okay through schizo are active in keeping busy with something kinda positive, self support, art, education, etc and keep busy with positive/normal friends.

Several schizo friends have given up organized religion…That was a way of coping after meeting a few groups of nuts who claim they hear God. Unfortunately, some mental care is okay with a person saying this and acting in a manner harmful to others so judge each situation independently and respond defensively when necessary…

If you have a story like mine, if you quit talking to the group, ignore the voices’ demands and do not talk aloud to yourself, sometimes your symptoms would improve in 2-3 years if you did not discuss the group you met very much.

I believe it can be both also… Either or…separately, or both together.
Though I hesitate with the "disease’ part. even when it is purely caused by physical reasons, brain trauma or abnormality, it is a RESULT of that, so SZ would be a symptom, not a disease itself.

Think of this…certain physical brain diseases or traumas can cause hallucinations…
Drugs and alcohol can cause hallucinations
Spirits can cause you to see and hear things.

Have to find out which one is causing it. The drugs & alcohol is easy…quit taking them and the hallucinations will stop… (Unless maybe you fried your brain on 50 hits of Acid or something)

That leaves the physical and spiritual.

My mother has sz - she’s the nicest, kindest person when she’s on her meds and they’re working… so I think it’s primarily a physical disease. I can’t imagine her soul being torn or anything like that.

i guess in order to answer this question properly you would need to ask other questions that are a lot more complicated like-

  • what is the mind?
  • what is the soul?
  • what is the spirit?
  • what does being spiritual mean?
  • is it religious?
  • what comes first the physical disease or the spiritual affliction?
    or does that happen co-dependently

there are probably other questions that i have missed tho

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@daydreamer

what is the mind? CONSCIOUSNESS, MAINLY SEATED IN THE BRAIN

what is the soul? SIMILAR TO MIND BUT MORE ETHERIC, NOT CENTERED IN BRAIN BUT CAN HOLD MEMORIES AND CONSCIOUSNESS…CAN ALSO TRAVEL OUTSIDE BODY: ASTRAL

what is the spirit? THE ETERNAL PART OF YOU FROM GOD THAT SHALL RETURN TO GOD… THE FLUID PART THAT CAN ALSO INCORPORATE SOUL/MIND

what does being spiritual mean? HAVING AWARENESS AND WORKING WITH SPIRIT

is it religious? ABSOLUTELY NOT

what comes first the physical disease or the spiritual affliction?or does that happen co-dependently IT ALL DEPENDS WHAT YOU ARE DEALING WITH…ANY OF THE 3 COULD HAPPEN DEPENDING ON THE PERSON AND CIRCUMSTANCES.

It’s a disease of experience.

I don’t know I think it’s mostly a physical disorder. True you may not be able to see the illness with your eyes, but that is because it is an internal illness. Who can naturally look inside of someone and see what is going on? It’s like someone with blood clotting problems. They may not appear sick but they are. The brain is a network of nerves, tissue, muscle and all that. the human brain weighs around 3 pounds and is about 15 centimeters long 100 billion neurons that each have a specific job to perform AboutPsychology.com

I know that we do not know what every ounce of space in the brain does, but having Schizophrenia or similar disorders is an illness where something with those neurons and other chemicals are off balance. I am a spiritual person, I do not think the true spirit of a person is affected by the disorder. They might understand what is going on around them, they may not be able to distinguish fact from nonfactual things but again that is in the brain and not the spirit.

Our bodies are but a shell. Our spirit is what makes us who we truly are. I like to think I’m a good person who was given the challenge to deal with Schizophrenia, for whatever reason. I believe God only gives you what he feels you can handle, or gives you certain situations because you need to go through them to learn some important lesson he wants you to know. I can’t fully explain what a spirit is, but the brain I can understand, it is physical and it can have things go wrong either with birth problems, or traumatic experiences whatever the reason. Schizophrenia is one of those problems the brain can go through if not fully developed properly.

It is neither, for it is not disease.

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It’s dis-ease…

True, in the sense of the word disease meaning sickness. Sometimes as Pob said it is dis-ease, as in not being at ease due to some of the experiences.

However, I can honestly say I would not be where I am today had I fought the so called symptoms, because many a time I learned from revelations, voices and visions, followed some and learned not to follow others, took a shamans path as a Christian into the mystical realms to understand and work with these things. There were pitfalls for sure, but everything was a learning experience i could use to add to knowledge and overcome negatives with positives, with light and with love.