Hello
I don’t know if this is the right place to post this but here goes…
In a nutshell I’ve been obsessing over schizophrenia almost 24/7 the past month. It started after my girlfriend dumped me over the phone (this was a month ago) and I had a breakdown, where I could hear someone outside my room and he was telling me that i’m going crazy, it was complex and I couldn’t tell whether it was real or not but i didn’t think it was. Also that night I had a delusion that someone’s family was trying to kill me because i’d done something bad, I could pretty much hear what they were saying/feel what they were doing although it still felt like it was coming from my mind? almost like a play i was witnessing.
After it had happened I returned fairly back to normal but with massive amounts of anxiety, obsessions and depression. What’s really concerning me is that I am still “hearing” things, not often external but inside my mind. They are mostly helpful like they remind me to do things or if i’ve forgot something, but sometimes i feel like they can go a bit darker, but not for very long.
This happens a lot when there are other noises around, almost like my brain is matching random noise with some memory of someones voice and also when I get paranoid they come about a lot more strongly. For example if i’m sleeping in a house and there’s other people in rooms around me, my brain obsesses over that and i can perceive their voice and what they would say?
Anyway the voices in my head are quite tolerable as long as I can relax and rationalise, I struggle at night or if i’m hungry.
What’s concerning me recently is that i’m hyper vigilant in my perceptions of the world, trying to check whether what i’m perceiving is not a hallucination.
For example at night if i stare at something it looks like it can move a little bit (not sure if i’m imagine it) and also things start to “breath”, where they move slowly in one direction a little bit and back a little bit. Another thing that moves like that are shadows cast by objects.
Recently (what caused me to make this post) is that I feel it’s got to the point where I am catching glimpses of things in the corner of my eye, and then when i look that way there’s nothing there.
I never explicitly hallucinate something that’s not there, but I feel like my brain is misinterpreting what it can see/hear?
I’m very concerned that what i’m experiencing is an indicator of schizophrenia developing and would love someone to share whether this sounds similar in any way to their experiences.
I’ve visited the GP, a psychiatrist and i’m having psychotherapy. The GP and psychiatrist was before the visual stuff started being noticed so i’m going back to him on Saturday. The GP said “severe anxiey and psychosis” and gave me propanalol, the psychiatrist said “anxiety and obsessive thoughts” and gave me Sertraline (had a horrific reaction to this, couldn’t take them) and the psychotherapist thinks it’s obsessions too.
Thanks for reading all this, I feel better now that i’ve wrote it all down.
Cheers!
I’m sorry you’re going through such a tough time, it must be very stressful dealing with issues with your girlfriend and the stress of it causing you to experience these symptoms.