Sza diagnosed. I received my diagnosis about six months ago after 2.5 years (at that time) in treatment and still find myself questioning it a lot. This is even though I can watch videos of other sza diagnosed people and see so many matching patterns between their stories and mine.
I struggle with the idea that I’m making all of this up. That I’ve just tricked my doctors and I’m a horrible person. That I’m doing this to get out of accountability for my life. That I’m creating my own struggle. It has me so turned around. I feel like other people are able to more easily accept their diagnoses. Yes, I’m definitely going to be talking to my therapist about this when I see her next. It’s just not great to deal with in the moment.
It sounds like there is a arching theme of overthinking. I had this before, where i thought i was faking all of this and this has a lot to do with our self esteem. What helped me was wondering if i feel so bad and having a guilty conscience, what are the odds im actually lying? I don’t know if you know what i mean, i suck at explaining,
While I initially became sick/hospitalized with sza in 2000 (at 34 years old), I was (believe it or not) only formally diagnosed 2 weeks ago. It’s a long story. I always suspected it was so and even spoke about it with my former, private therapist, but so long as it was off any official public record, I remained in denial. I accepted the diagnoses of PTSD and Major Depression Disorder (with Psychotic features), so that’s what I preferred to think. But I also suffered terribly (psychological anguish) in these years without being properly medicated and educated regarding schizophrenia. That was my fault because I hid the hallucinations and delusions from treating professionals early on. I just wanted to ignore it and try to wish it away. But I am in fact a flaming schizophrenic. Meaning, I have all the classic or textbook symptoms - and so I have no doubt about the diagnosis now that I am no longer in denial. But, because I functioned as well as I did for so many years (despite my delusions and hallucinations), I second guessed my condition. I am not sure if you may be doing something similar. I just thought I would share. I only found this website and forum about a week ago and have been lurking around.
Welcome to the forum @TreeTop ! Glad you found us!
I’m sorry you struggled without proper treatment for so long. That’s very hard to deal with.
A few tips on things that confuse newbies:
Cake day is the anniversary date of when you joined.
The 1515 or other numbers at the end of peoples posts are because there’s a 15 character minimum to post. So people put 15s after until they get to the minimum characters to post.
I am in the same position as you right now, I really feel this. Seeing this post though makes me feel so much better knowing someone else feels this. Thank you for posting.
I was just wondering if you went under treatment,or your are going " rogue", (dealing with delusions by self)? Curious how the things settled out for you…
Sometimes I think I might be better without meds…
Thank you @TreeTop. I am sort of in denial as well and I read your answer very carefully. I also changed lots of jobs in the past 5 years, that could be an exclamation mark for myself.