How do you remember yourself? did you or your family realize something was off from early on, or did the whole hing come later?
One of my very few memories of the time before i was 10 is two ladys, one looking like mmy grandmother, that used to scream at me in my mind about things i do and read. that was when i was about 4 i think. After that i also remember me tellng my parents that i used to live in africa an chew with my tongue. Then right before i was 8 i started hearing voices, there was a ton, 24/7 and they kept talking with eachother, teling me how they died and showing me. i used to feel huge pain when someone told me that they were shot, to the point i thought i was fainting onece on a bike ride. I told my mother then and we did go to a doc, she said it was just me being stressed about something, definetly not sz. Also i remember thinking im jesus or some kind of prophet ( i was a really spirtuall child, i started being a practicing muslim from the age of 9 ) and that thought came into my mind alot. also i dont know if you ever thought about this but the question why do i see everything bothered me. There is so many people in the world, but why do I see them, why i dont feel their point of view, are they all in my mind etc. most of this has been also from my mom who remembers more of my childhood than me. also i have been extremely scared of upstair region of my house and my own room. I believed that a skeleton would come out. this is until now, im still scared to go upstairs alone, let alone at night!
Now that i think of it, i think i have been in a mild psychosis since i was really young. My mother and i have been talking and she suggested it might be becouse when i was born, i had to be pulled out by the head, and that might of pushed something in my small developing skull bone.
dont know if thats right and couldve caused it but still, its the best explanation that comes up.
have you also had weird childhood behviour? sorry for long post
when i was two , my mother ( the evil one ) said i looked like a little old man and just stared at things for ages not moving.
at 4/5 i remember being paranoid, my mother said i did not join in at kindergarten,i did not sit with the other kids…etc… i would stare at the teacher ( who was a family friend ) and it made the teacher feel very uncomfortable…good times !?!
my mother found this all amusing , she never got me any help, she did not care, but she did not feed us much either…a nasty cold piece of work ! she enjoyed watching me and others suffer !
take care
darksith that reminds me of my experiences as a toddler at play group this is what my mum told me she took me to playgroup and i cried my eyes out they said oh dont worry shell stop soon i didnt and i cried all day everytime my mum left me in the end they said dont bring her back!
Oh boy. I was molested by a woman (made me fear women until I lost my virginity, still feel a little uneasy around them) and I was slightly delusional and paranoid. I wouldnt sleep alone in fear of people being in the attic next to my room until I was 7, and I was seriously afraid of things being in the dark, I slept with a light on until I was 13. I also thought that my thoughts affected others, I thought that I made my aunt have a miscarrage at 11, which really â– â– â– â– â– â– my psyche up. I developed OCD and identity problems at 12.
I was a bright kid. In kindergarten, I could read and do addition and subtraction and was frustrated with being in a room full of “stupids” and then got this whole “■■■■the system” idea about education and quit applying myself. At age 11 I got my head back on straight and made all A’s for a couple of years, then I got “emo” in junior high and my grades plummeted.
I did well in high school though, I transferred to an international school in my sophomore year and flourished, was one of the cool kids and overcame anorexia and OCD and was healthy for a couple of years until the prodrome of my schizophrenia at 18 1/2. I became a chain smoker and got obsessed with pot when I had a testicle infection and couldn’t workout (I was a fitness junkie and bodybuilder) and then when my balls healed I was ■■■■■■■psychotic and ■■■■got ugly. I got back into working out, but I became introverted and was in the active phase of paranoid schizophrenia, really off out of touch with reality, hallucinating and delusional. My friends could tell I was schizophrenic. They told me later that they all agreed upon it long before I was diagnosed, in fact everyone at school knew I wasn’t right in the head.
My sisters often said that to me when I was small. U are like an old man. I am quiet and usually try to avoid overstimulation. They also said I stare at them. They are so angry, as my sisters were shoplifting and they made me pull the trolley out of the cashier counter. They said I made them felt uncomfortable. I was a small child. I think I sensed something but they didn’t told me what was going on.
The other time, the school principal said I stared at her when I was presented a prize in the school hall.
my mum did her best and so did my dad i guess, but we were poor although we were lucky to have a big house, idk where all the money went, they were both working and my mum never had any money, i heard my dad say she gave some money to my gran but i asked about that and i still dont know about that. we never went into town and i never had any good clothes, i went on holiday twice with my gran on my dads side, she was awesome and never forgot a birthday, it was rare for us to have guests come to our house, we were always visiting relatives idk why they didnt come to ours, my mum was hard of hearing though.
i remember crying as a child in the kitchen next to the washing machine to drown me out, probably starved of affection lol either that or i was just a noizy baby, i rmember my mum came in and looked at me and left me again but i dont think she was a bad mother,
she recently told me i was an accident though, she said i wasn’t planned, her coil failed and i was the result, i guess the odds of me being here are pretty astronomical if you think about it, what are the odds of being born then what are the odds of the coil failing? she said i was a happy accident tho, sometimes think i am a disapointment to her tho,
my dad said that i fkd things up for myself when i was unwell but he doesn’t understand that it wasnt my fault it was because i was under a lot of stress and i couldn’t take all the pressures of that job as well as being depressed, maybe he is right, maybe i did fk everything up but i didnt mean to, i wished i could have been sucessful but things dont work out like that sometimes and i hated all the dirt i got very dirty.
I was a HYPER little guy even with my meds. I was really friendly and out of my head hyper. I do remember the mail man often running past our house so I couldn’t chase him and talk to him as he delivered the mail.
My Mom and Dad was alway picking me up and leaving a place quickly after something exploded, or something got messed up with me in the middle of the chaos looking completely bewildered as to how it all happened.
I was told I was 5 when it was becoming obvious that I wasn’t doing well. I’ve had physical fights with imaginary friends. I had my first psychotic break they think. I was in everyones face all the time and talked really fast and jumped around a lot and had no idea what no touching meant. I was told that I picked up language very young and quickly (english, spanish and ASL) but I was almost 6 before I could really dress myself without a problem or a tantrum. I would take my clothing off a lot too. It was hot and itchy I told people.
I was told that speedy sixers swim team was a life saver because I would be so tired after swim practice I’d be mellow; then I could hold a conversation. So my parents put me in every water sport they could find. (you can’t constantly chatter when your head is under water )
I could do my school work but only in little 10 minute sections before I had to get up and run around in circles and babble talk and write on the walls and then refocus and do another 10 minutes of work. But I could do a lot in the 10 minutes I could focus.
I was 11 when my kid sis was born. That was when I got really weird I was told. God sent her down for ME. So in my mind, she was mine. I owned her. My parents say life got much stranger from there.
when I was a kid (about 7) I used to avoid the cracks in the pavement. I kept steepint over them and avoiding them. This, I later found out is symptomatic of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)…which is related to social anxiety.
I showed signs of mood and thought instability as a child - My childhood was filled with fear, panic, hyperactivity, euphoria, depression, paranoia, fears - well you get the picture
I was hyper and got beaten a lot. My dad was paranoid and punished me for stuff he thought I was going to do. Started smoking as 8 y old. Started drinking heavily at 16 y. Voices started one year before that.
I couldn’t sleep at night. I thought my dad would come and kill me in my sleep. He almost crushed my skull once with his hands. I got all dizzy.
He told me he wanted to beat me up. When I was 12 I hit him in the face with my fist. After that he stopped abusing me physically. But the psychological terror continued. He loved to scare us kids. He had a really bad temper and beat my cousine for throwing a snowball at him.
When I was 16 I was a mess. I was about to kill my dad. But my parents divorced and I moved to my mom. I got really depressed and was drunk almost every day. Even in school. Nobody cared or said anything to me about it.
Recently after telling my dad about my SZA diagnosis, he said something like “I always thought you were some kind of savant or something.” He is probably referring to the fact that I absorbed information like a digital sponge and spent every childhood moment thinking about things (how things work, inventions, etc.) I was the kind of kid who took apart all his toys to see how they worked. My mind was always WAY overactive.
Apart from that, I was an overly energetic child at times and always got into a lot of trouble. I didn’t like authority, mostly because authority wasn’t effective or fair. I would be called a tattletale and ignored if I tell a parent/teacher that some kid hit me, so I usually took things into my own hands and an-eye-for-an-eye as they say. So I used to get into a lot of trouble for all the fights I’d get in.
I’ve always had problems with communication (apart from a hereditary stutter). People would say things and I wasn’t quite sure how they meant it to be taken. Same with talking, I’d get into trouble because of the way I’d phrase something like I was being a smartass or something, but was all unintentional. This lead to some problems with relationships and made me look like a clueless idiot in middle school when it got worse.
So, yes there were definitely signs early on, just not difinative ones; they only really showed I was different from other people. And I’m not really surprised that I got some major MI diagnosis, and I’m sure other people I was close with in childhood would agree.
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