My neighbors are destroying me worse than schizophrenia ever did. If I resist, they get nastier. If I give up they get even more rotten. I don’t foresee it ending well no matter what I do.
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That doesen’t sound good. What is going on? Are they harassing you?
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Maybe it’s unique to me because my old psychiatrist is the only one who ever understood what I mean. I just “feel” that people are invading my space, listening to me as I go about my day. Maybe it’s all in our heads but I get an almost tangible feeling that they are in my apartment, not physically but mentally. I do hear the women laugh in reaction to things I do.
When I tell the counselor who visits every three weeks i always play the job card.
You guys on here are not the only ones who don’t understand what I’m trying to say. My sisters usually flat out say it’s all in my head and the neighbors are doing nothing. Other times they begrudgingly acknowledge some of the problems i have with neighbors.
But I tell everybody: I drive to work through heavy traffic three times a week. I work 6 hours in a building. Before the COVID 19 the building was pretty crowded.
I work on a crew, but I’m on my own. I drive home in traffic, come home and cook dinner and clean up after myself, I take one college class online per quarter. i lived on my own for twenty years, usually renting rooms in peoples houses where I mingled with them but took care of myself. I’ve been driving my own cars steadily since 1996. I handle my own money, I handle any business with Social Security, the DMV or the IRS etc. I’m not a dummy. I’ve been doing all this for many years and usually i do it very competently. I’m really laying it all out on the line here but I’m trying to make a point.
I make all my appointment myself such as to doctors. And then go to them myself.
I’m competent enough to do all that (and more) yet people are going to tell me that I’m imagining the ladies next door laughing or screwing with me. Basically, people try to tell me that I can’t tell the difference between total silence, and subtle laughter.
No one is going to believe that the crazy women next door do sh*t to drive me crazy and control me. I can do the most complicated paperwork from Social Security myself, and take difficult college classes and sometimes get good grades but somehow I am imagining power trips from neighbors who are 6 feet away from me on the other side of a thin wall.
It’s frustrating and wrecks what little self-confidence I have left. I can see people reading this and dismissing it in one sentence or even one word as delusional or it’s all in my head. When the neighbor lady sits out back and does some mind games that I can almost tangibly feel and I try to figure it out it drives me crazy. But I’m supposed to pretend it’s not happening.
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You sound like you got your wits about you, there’s no doubt about that. And what you say about your neighbours sounds familiar. I too have had similar thoughts in the past, but I learned that I was over associating things to me. Getting a hard thought in my head and ruling out the possibility of chance and coincidence.
And a good argument for the neighbour not mixing up into my business is that they have a life of their own and are too busy to care what their neighbours are up to, unless they play too loud music or something like that. Ask yourself what do you care about what your neighbours are up to? And chances are that most people feel the same.
I would focus on learning disassociation. Whenever you hear something you think has something to do with you, you have to consider coincidence and that there are multiple reasons for a person to laugh. Maybe they are watching a sitcom on tv or are on the phone with someone or are laughing at a self made joke they made up in their head. I sometimes laugh out loud of my own silly jokes I make up.
I know what you are talking about. Hope that you are able to have a more open mind about why things happen.
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Thanks for putting in the time to make a thoughtful, rational reply. It’s what most other people have been saying too.
I do appreciate that you acknowledge (like my sisters and the counselor sometimes do) that a little of it is real. I guess it’s back to the drawing board for me to try to live in my apartment within my own four walls, without any outside interference. This has always been my goal.
Some experiences in life we have which no one else understands or knows about and are unique to ourselves and affects us in ways no one else understands.
But thanks for the insights, maybe things will change for the better if it sinks in.
Have a nice night and thanks.
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Your welcome.
I used to live in a apartment where the isolation was poor and I could hear a lot of what was going on in the apartment above me. I got complaints on me when I had a party once and she would stomp her foot in the floor when I played music even though I was not playing loud. It made me feel that my privacy was invaded because it felt like I couldn’t do things that even were within reason in my own apartment. I had my first psychotic episode while I lived there, and that factor may have played a part. But the living alone bit is proabably the culprit. I don’t know if you have noticed the same, but if you have company with someone else in your apartment, thoughts about neighbours and sounds just dissipates.
Now I am lucky to live in a relative new apartment from the 2010’s in a cold country. Over the recent years there has become a lot of focus around making apartments energy effective in cold countries, meaning that they are generally isolated very well. Where I live now I hardly ever hear my neighbours because of the good isolation. I have lived here for over 5 years and never had a complaint.
I don’t know where you live, but I guess that might be a solution if you live in a country with cold regions and they focus on energy effectiveness. So I guess if for instance you lived in the U.S you could maybe move to washington state or michigan or some other cold state and get a relative new apartment if you can afford it. Everything built after 2000 is probably pretty well isolated. Something worth checking out.
A good night to you too.
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Today I am really far out of the Truman show delusion. What little delusion there is left is pretty cooperative.
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