Well, I have been in that state, I tapped out and got on meds and now my life sucks a lot less. You’re not alone, I used to just sit there and not say anything, or if I did, I said crazy ■■■■ and freaked people out.
Now I am looking at PhD programs…in psychology…lol
Meds can really help. I had to relearn social skills, mine were basically wiped clean off my brain and I had to relearn how to do things like say hello and make a conversation. I remember winter of 2012, I hardly spoke at all. I think during November I said like three sentences to my parents and just went to class and the gym and worked out excessively. I have the “madman” type of paranoid schizophrenia, it makes me agitated and anxious and just think about survival. Unfortunately this type is correlated with higher rates of recovery and higher levels of functioning, especially with medication. I sometimes wish that I was just still ■■■■■■ up beyond recognition and not worth anything. Its called having strong positive symptoms and low negative symptoms, that and I am quite bright, if I may say, so I do really well in school, which makes people think that I am fine, but my closer friends and family know that I have chronic symptoms and that I just manage them and cope with pain. Psych students get it too- they are cool. I make friends with a lot of them. Im actually quite passionate about psychology- mostly obsessed with psychopathology and stigma, but stigma is social psychology, psychopathology is clinical. I am also quite into research, I love learning by reading tons of stuff and seeing how constructs evolve with time and more investigation. I like to look at the roots of what I study, then look at how it has come to where it is today, and then try to predict where it will go in ten years. Like stigma, prejudice, and interventions for that crap- I have Gordon Allport’s 1954 book on the coffee table and hey, his contact theories still hold up sixty years later. Im working on a thesis about imagined contact with the mentally ill- I had to bone up on psychopathology to choose which mental illnesses to include in the study- three psychosocially based ones and three neurologically based ones. I actually had to run a pilot survey on the members of the research lab I am in.
I used to have zero friends too. You can get better. Hell, I even had a girlfriend and had lots of casual sex before that. If you met me in real life, you would never guess that I am the guy behind this username and picture of Mickey Mouse. Like seriously, I cover my craziness up pretty well. Some people have seen it, it comes out when I exercise or am sleep deprived. I do rather insane lifting routines but am orderly and friendly between sets. But I ■■■■ the weights up real good.
Try reading and listening to Elyn Saks and Fred Frese. Both are professionals who made it back to reality but still have their schizophrenia. John Nash died like two days ago- he was incredible, but he was not really on board with medication and set a less than perfect example because of that…still, read his stuff. DONT watch the damn movie. Its full of ■■■■. I respect John Nash, he did good (good, not just well). He was before the modern drugs, though…I probably would have rejected thorazine too.
Try finding friends in healthy activities like learning (school, book clubs, NAMI workshops, ect) or exercise (find a workout buddy, hell find like three of them) and hopefully your family will understand and accept you. Half of my family loves me, the other half pretends I dont exist for the most part. I guess I am just a schizo to some people and will always just be that and only that to them.
I have friends- old friends from high school have come back around, new friends from college, like I said, even was in a relationship for a while. I am going to lift with an old friend today, I hanged out with him yesterday. People are a bit in awe of how “successful” I am- looking at PhD programs, havent made a B since I was a freshman, am very muscular, blah blah blah.
And Im not delusional about school, I actually sent my GRE scores to a few schools and one professor emailed me back in like an hour saying that he will be taking PhD students next fall, I am a HUGE fan of his work, I have his earlier work on the coffee table and have been reading it- hes the leading expert on stigma in the world.
Things can get better, a whole lot better.