If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my ten years of living with schizophrenia, it’s that no one is judging you as harshly as you’re judging yourself.
I’ve lived with this illness for a long time, and I’ve been through every iteration of fear about what people thought about me and what they were thinking about me. I’ve experienced every anxiety possible about what people thought, and I’ve been so afraid to leave my house that I’ve holed up for days.
In fact, the main overarching fear I’ve had in my years of dealing with schizophrenia is that people were making fun of me, so I know what I’m talking about when I speak of paranoia and anxiety.
There are different ways this fear that people are judging you manifests; maybe it’s about the way you look or a thing you did or a certain way you held yourself, but there always seems to be a little voice in your head that tells you you’re not doing it right.
Yes yes yes, when I walk by people and i hear them talk softly then laugh i always think they’re laughing at me…when they’re probably not. I’m getting better though…well I’ve learned to say “screw them!” but I should learn to say “they’re not talking about me”
For me it’s hard to separate the paranoia from the social anxiety. One of the reasons I’m hesitant to go out much is the feeling I am giving of signs of how dysfunctional/odd I am.
It’s like I’ve got " Here comes the weirdo" emblazoned on my back.
If I see people looking in the area of where I am and they’re laughing my instinct is to think they’re laughing at me.
I’ve noticed that you do have a tendency to expect people to dislike you and to assume they’re motivated by malice or antipathy.
I definitely have the first - I was neglected and abused growing up, bullied in primary school for being singled out and taught separately by the teachers.
Whenever I find myself in a place where I don’t fit in (my last job, for example) I fall back into that pattern of thought. If I stay there long enough, that pattern of thought extends to every area of my life.
And when it gets that far, I begin to act distant, awkward and strange - in other words, in ways that are difficult to like. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
I really don’t know what advice I have for that, other than to challenge those thoughts and interpretations. If it’s an environment you can get out of, get out of it. If it’s not, practice thinking of neutral or positive motives for people - doesn’t matter if you believe them, just teach your brain how to think of them.
Your brain has good reason to think the way it does - it was trained well. Try to teach it new skills.
A lot of it is due to bullying and ridicule as a teenager and to a lesser extent ridicule as an adult. Much of the bullying/ridicule stemming from negative reactions to my physical and social awkwardness(Aspergers? NVLD more likely).
The thing is I have never had help and support for the social difficulties and know that because of that there’s the potential to be seen in a bad light.
I judge myself pretty harshly, but when I start getting criticism from others that I don’t think is fair I rebel. Maybe it is because I am seeing them as judging me as harshly as I judge myself.
idk if you agree with this or not but it says in the good book that we will all be judged one day unless we believe then we would have no fear of judgement, i believe this happens when we die.
it also says in Romans 14:12-14 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.
I’m constantly worried that I have something other than my diagnosis of schizophrenia and an unspecified mood disordered. It’s scary to think that I’m becoming an overt narcissist or maybe I’ve been a covert one for years. We need to leave the psychiatry and psychology to the experts, though.
Is this a result of having SZ/A noticeable enough to people so that they reacted to you in this way?
I’ve never had much either. I had my Father and my grandma from about age 3 to 9. Then I moved from the City to the Suburbs and I felt like I was very different compared to everyone around me. And I had my just my Dad for age 11 until he got married and I felt like I lost all of my attachment and I never recovered from that.
At this point I don’t feel very capable of handling the world, even though everybody tries to get me to.
Psychotic depression, but no, I don’t think so. When my psychosis really took off, when I was a teen, I had and continued to make and keep a lot of friends.
It was before I was 10 when kids bullied me, mainly because I was taught higher level coursework by myself. I got along fine until my test scores came back and the teachers started making a fuss.
Once I got to junior high and all the local schools combined, I was fine.
I have heard people sitting at one table in a restaurant saying “Kill him” and when they noticed my reaction, they kept laughing and said to each other “Kill him in that video game”. (I couldn’t remember the exact words though)
I was terrified at first hearing someone wanted to kill me, but then only to find out they were talking about playing online game.
I’ve been unlucky in this regard. I judge myself very harshly, true, but I’ve had people, who are now former friends, telling me things like “it’s just schizophrenia, it’s not that bad” and “schizophrenia is fairly easy to treat, I don’t see what your problem is, just get on Seroquel” (fun fact: I was on Seroquel for several years and while it was fabulous for treating my symptoms, it also gave me diabetes and my psych had to take me off of it because even with proper insulin use, my blood sugar was staying over 600. Never had those issues before the Seroquel, so her telling me to just get on it after I had just been removed from it was kind of… Not cool.)
why would the teachers separate you from your peer group? Was it because of the bullying? That wouldn’t be logical, I’d expect the teacher to teach the bullies separately, using the time to teach them about discipline and compassion.
If it was for the test scores—they should have provided after-class mentoring, not taking you out of your social environment!
