Hi everyone, I am 31 years old, and I just discovered this website yesterday after doing an 0276 search about schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression. Wow, that's a lot! The more I hear about symptoms of anxiety, depression, and delusions associated with schizophrenia, the more I realize that I suffer from those illnesses. The symptoms, although probably ranging from mild to moderate, are there unfortunately.
Last night when I came to this website, reading the posts, sent chills down my spine as I read in horror and in tears that every suspicion that I had that my thought processes are not normal/average was confirmed. At the same time, it made me feel strong to identify the source of my day to day struggles with my mind, so now I know that it is something I have to fight and that there are others like me out there who can relate. It is hard to talk to anyone. I have tried to talk to my husband about these horrible thoughts and emotions that I experience, and every time he immediately dismisses the topic. It is frustrating.
I am a full time college student, so I am functional at some level. However, this is about all I can handle and with much difficulty. Every day I find it a challenge to get up in the morning. This can be attributed to me just not being a morning person. I am energetic at night, and usually stay up till midnight or later sometimes till 2a.m. doing homework. I usually get up at 11 a.m., and sometimes even later. I usually set my schedule to start class at noon or later. Some days when I don't have class, I get up just because I really have to get up and get something to eat at around 1 p.m. or later.
Concentration is a big challenge because I keep having these thoughts of things that people have said sometimes to offend me and sometimes for no particular reason or for reasons other than to hurt me. Things that usually don't bother me, some days it's like they come to torment me. I start getting flashbacks of something that someone said, and then I start thinking about it and emotionally reacting to it in a negative way thinking that I am right in the way I feel and thinking of aggressive ways in which I should have reacted at the moment. However, lately I have caught myself doing this, and tried to make it better. About the people that I felt have offended me, I started saying in my mind and heart: I forgive you, I forgive you, and I'll say a prayer for both you and I. Now, please go away. Please, go away. It has helped a little bit, but then it's like my mind produces other memories or flashbacks of things that I didn't even know were there. I have to find ways to not give in to reacting to memories and get carried away. Sometimes taking deep breaths helps. All this makes it hard to concentrate on my schoolwork.
Social life: I have none. Partially because I have to devote a lot of time to my schoolwork, and partially because it's hard for me to make friends. I have tried to join student groups on campus and try to make friends, but it hasn't worked.
Depression: I sleep a lot. My entire back hurts so bad from my sleeping too much. My head hurts from sleeping too much as well. I went to the gym a couple of times this week to try to help these problems. Watching the news will get me depressed. I don't watch T.V., but if I happen to be at a place where the news is on and there is news about someone who died in a terrible accident, I get depressed. I start going over it in my mind, and I get depressed. I start thinking about the accident and the families of the deceased and what a rough time they're going through. I start thinking about the accident scene, what the person may have felt as it happened. Nothing good. In newspapers, my eyes tend to gravitate toward stories of people dying. I can tell you every horrible, sudden death or fluke fatal accident that I've read and heard about. My mind tends to delve into these things, and it all makes me sad.
Anxiety: I don't experience the panic attacks associated with anxiety, but I do experience constant worry and anxiety about homework, social situations including family gatherings. I worry so much about homework that I often end up turning in my assignments late.
Employment: I have been fired from all my jobs because it's so hard for me to be socially successful. It's hard because everything that happens starts playing back in my mind. My mind is always trying to read something negative into something that happened or that somebody said. In my heart, I am an optimist, but my mind does these things. This makes it hard to concentrate on tasks and to establish positive ongoing social workplace interactions. The more social interactions I have, the more I am lost in thought with my brain processing everything that happened over and over.
Schizophrenia: Some people say they see people that no one else can see or hear voices. I may be safe there, but I do have these horrible thoughts that come to torment me and that I wish would just go away. It's a challenge for me to keep them from taking over.
Some days are better than others too. Some days the thoughts are few, and sometimes it seems like a torrent of thoughts and flashbacks that I have to sort through. Some days my mind feels almost clear, and it's not such a challenge to focus on tasks.
Treatment: My husband and I do not believe in pharmaceuticals or conventional doctors. I have to fight this, though. I have to research it and find ways to fight it or manage it. Now that I know that this is not normal just as I suspected, I will find ways to treat it with alternative medicine and psychotherapy. For now, it means so much to me to have found a place where I can talk about it with other people who can relate.
There you go! Heavy stuff, I know, but no one else is willing to hear about it. I can't seem to be allowed to talk about it except here. :)
