Schizophrenia Diaries

I live in Ontario, Canada. I started being sick in the summer of 2005. It was a long process of learning that you’re sick, acceptance that you have the sickness and then getting help.

Sometime in the summer of 2005 I was getting very nervous or I had symptoms of anxiety. I had headache, very nervous, and sweaty and I can easily smell myself even though I just had a shower. One afternoon I went home from work, I thought I was having flu. One thing that I couldn’t understand was I was shaking very much. I was very nervous for no particular reason. I thought something bad is happening to my family back home.

Then finally I have this thought that people have been following me around every where I go, even my work they were there watching me. I didn’t know why: it was driving me crazy. I thought I was a subject of a study and these people following me were students and researchers of Mental illness and they are trying to humiliate me to put me to hospital because somehow they know me and all my personal emails were being hacked. They were humiliating me through broadcasting everything I say in the radio.
I thought I was a fish that they were trying to fish. Everytime I hear radio they sing to me and it’s all about me. Even articles in the newspaper have hidden meaning and the subject were about me. They were humiliating me to drive me crazy so that they can put me to the hospital.

Then I started having these ideas that some articles and comics stories in the newspaper have hidden meaning so that all people can’t understand it. They make fun of you in the radio or newspaper and they hide it. Newspapers are afraid to be racist so they hide it through their comic stories and words.
Everything I read started to have different meanings.

I stopped listening to radio and I stopped watching TV because I felt that everything they talk about is offensive. It was hard for me and making me very angry that people were talking about me and laughing at me and listening to me. I started becoming weak and very depressed. I started calling for God, I asked why are they doing these to me. I stayed in my room a lot.

Finally I moved back home to my parents house and my mom was so worry because of my crazy stories. She ended up calling for help. A social worker and a police officer picked me up in my house to put me to the hospital.

I was diagnosed with schizo-effective disorder. I was even more depressed when they told me I had mental illness. I didn’t believe it, instead I thought it was just a bad events in my life and God is trying to call me or some spiritual calling. I had some spiritual longing in my heart and due to the sickness it became distorted. I started hearing voices and hallucination: I thought I was special.
The voices were telling me what to do, even telling me some stories. I thought I was having telepathy because I can hear my friends’ voice while I’m locked up in the hospital. I didn’t know whose voices I was hearing I thought I was talking to ghosts. At night I was so afraid to sleep because I was afraid the devil will get me.

I’ve been in the hospital 5 times before I realized and accepted that I was really sick. I been in in few medication but because of side effects I didn’t take them properly. It took about 3 years before I’m back to myself again. I feel lucky because I stopped my medication and I am well now, I don’t hear voices anymore. All my paranoia is gone. I feel better now. It’s like a miracle.

Having mental illness have many stages:
First stage– not knowing you’re sick, getting the symptoms
Second– sickness getting worst so you ended up in the hospital for treatment
Third– getting diagnosed
Fourth– YOu don’t accept that you have mental illness because of stigma so you don’t want to get proper help so you have relapses or you get sicker
Fifth– Acceptance that you’re sick
Sixth– Getting theraphy and and taking your treatment seriously
Seventh– relapses because you stop taking your medication
Eigth– Being sick again
Nineth– some people have to stay in medication a lifetime to stay well, some get lucky and be well after few years of taking medication

Hi! My name is Julia and I’m 20 and I have been struggling with schizophrenia for about a year now. I tripped on Coricidin Cough and Cold last year in February (08) and kept taking it for three days, I didn’t get over it for a week and had been dropped on the street on my head, I didn’t come out all that well, I thought my boyfriend was a serial killer and was going to kill me so I hid knives through out the house. I broke up with him when I thought he was being overbearing and went home to live with my mom. Through out the summer I was doing fine until I felt like people were watching me and talking about me in coded messages in front of me. At first I called them the papanazi’s as a joke, but then it got serious and then I thought I was on some kind of hidden camera show and no one was going to tell me, I thought they hid cameras in my shower and everything and wouldn’t go to the bathroom or take showers for days at a time. Then I went on a vacation with a group of friends
and was listening to people “talk” about me. It seemed like they could hear my thoughts. It was at that moment I knew I was totally screwed, people were going to know every little bad thing I had ever done in my life. When I got home from the trip my mom put me in the hospital, I didn’t want to go. I thought everyone was just lying and they were going to hide my gift under mental illness and treat me like dirt. I fought tooth and nail. They put me on drugs. Then I found out it was my right to go off the drugs, as soon as I did I started hearing voices, the voices of everyone around me so I thought I could communicate with everyone around me. Then one day God spoke to me and told me he hated me and to kill myself. He said God wouldn’t say that to you would he, then he said “Must be the Devil” Then he said I was going to die the next day of a heartattack. They put me back in the hospital and back on the pills. They diagnosed me with Drug Induced Psychosis. This was in
like November (08). Now it’s May (09) and I’ve been living out of the hospital and on meds since, my stays were only about a week long. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia about 2 weeks ago and it finally shocked me awake. I now think it’s … possible… that people might not be able to hear my thoughts. But I don’t know how to adjust how I think to fully accommodate this new revelation. Last night I wasn’t able to sleep and I started hearing voices. I decided to listen to the voices, because listening to them helps me to fall asleep faster. My fiance talks in his sleep. While I was listening to the voices one said I love you and then another said I love you more and at the same time my fiance said in his sleep I love you more. So I still think that if you’re reading you know exactly who I am and all the world hears my thoughts. But I’m trying to disbelieve that. My goal right now is to get stable enough to someday go off the meds and have a baby, which brings on a whole
slew of new problems. Like it everyone can hear my thoughts I’m never going to be able to have sex, or my kids will know how crazy I am, or when I’m scared too… just a whole slew of things you wouldn’t want your kids knowing. I really hope people can’t hear my thoughts… Thanks for listening, God Bless!

I do not know what people with schizophrenia actually go through. Around the attack of 9/11 my dad (a lonely truck driver) started to act strange. He told me the terriosts were out to get him. He said they knew him. I was scared, then again I thought maybe just maybe he was joking. Around thanksgiving I went to his house. He did not want to turn on the lights, He just sat in the dark. He said they were after him. I again thought he was joking or hoped so. He also claimed to have a chip implanted in his head and said he heard a ringing. He said the television was sending him messages. At this time I did not know of schizophrenia. My grandmother wanted me (because I am the oldest child) to have him sent away to a mental health center, she then told me of an aunt I never knew who suffered from schizophrenia. She is now in a mental health center to this day. I never could put away my dad. I have cried many nights. I know this has to be what he is suffering from. He seems to have better
days now. sometimes he slips when we are in a conversation and I have to leave. I have talked with him once about it. He said he is not crazy that everything is true that happens to him. I am now in college in a psychology class. I have chose the topic of schizophrenia to do a research paper on hoping I can get a better understanding. This website is wonderful I have some insight on the daily struggles of this disease. I wish I knew how to help my father, that is kind of what I hope to gain from this research paper. If anyone has any answers that can help me that would be wonderful thank you.

I am 16 years old. A diagnosed schizophrenic. I have been to the hospital 3 times already for suicidal thoughts. The second time I went was when i found out that i had the disease. When I ususually have gone, the doctors have all tried hurting me to help me. Pills are gross. I slept a lot there. Everybody laughed at me. Theire help did not help much yet. I wish it had. This stinks being a schizo. Scary.

Sometimes the room im in will turn all red and blood slowly will drip from ceiling and floor. Sometimes I’ll feel crawling centipedes all over me. People will touch me and not be there. The smells are disgusting. Vomit. Burning rubber. Pee. Poop. Sometimes every stinky smell in the world all at once.

I can see the future. Think something and it happens. The voices screech at me trying to wreck me. Make me miserable. I dont know where those demon voices come from. The people voices, either. All kinds of voices at once. Its a nightmare. They tell me everyone hates me. Everyone in the world is coming together and poisoning me.

Thats why i dont take drinks. Because the poision is in there. Somewhere. At the top. At the bottom. People think us schizophrenics are just crazy. We’re not crazy. We just dee things differenly than them. We arre suffering. Suffering. Suffering….

I first came down with schizophrenia when I was 16, but I had no idea what had happened to me. I just knew that I had lost my ability to function like I used to and I couldn’t remember who I was anymore. It happened right as my friend was getting across to my mind that other people were around me that I couldn’t see, and I noticed people around (which later I have realized is an ability known as telepathy) He then said that they could know everything about me. That is when the illness hit, because it was not true that people can know everything about you, even if they could be in our minds.

What I have come to, that has cured me, is that people can not know who you are. Because, Who you believe yourself to be in your heart is who you are (Your Soul) From your soul is where you get regular functioning. You can decide how you want to come across to people and what is important for you to do and get done. If you believe that somebody could know this part of you it would throw you off completely from who you really are, and you would not be able to function the same and also you would begin to think all sorts of different dillusions about who you are and what reality really is!

So regaining a stable concept of what a normal person’s function is has enabled me to reconnect with my actual soul and to be in control of a ‘me’ that I actually recognize. To do this you must know that you heart (feelings) and your soul (who you believe yourself to be in your heart.) are hidden from the world.

I think a functioning in ourselves that we had never known about came over us suddenly and we were unable to distinguish the true boundry lines. This functioning is known as telepathy, being able to connect with other people in our minds. This is a function that we have control over. We can control what we speak in a similar manner to controling what we think. So having your thoughts known isn’t a privacy issue seeing that we choose what we will reveal to people!