So I just wrote this whole thing and I'm really sorry it's so long! I just wanted to make sure I included everything I thought would be important to know. Thanks to whoever has the patience to read the whole thing and help. Here you go:
I am 21 years old and am so fed up with being anxious and worried all the time. When I was little, I remember being very ambitious and determined. I had a great imagination and I had so much confidence in myself- I really believed that when I grew up I could and would become anything I wanted to be. However, every so often I would get really hyper and overexcited. This was to the point of really bugging my parents and family members. I think I might have just been bored or wanted attention, I'm not sure. Sometimes I pinched other little kids behind their parents' backs, I guess to make something happen because I was bored. Once, I stepped on a baby chick when I was 5 but felt horrible afterwards. I would cry for years after that happened whenever I thought about what I did. Sometimes I would get in trouble by my parents for not listening to them when they told me to stop acting so hyper (for lack of a better word, I don't really know how to describe how I acted!) For the most part, I had a normal/happy childhood. I'm from a really wealthy area in the country, so I am very priveleged and have gotten most of the things I ever wanted. During my childhood, my parents always fought. They finally divorced when I was ten years old. Randomly, my mom would cry. And my dad was an alcoholic. My parents fought whenever he was drunk.
Besides that, I had a lot of friends and never did great in school but never did horribly, either. Towards the end of middle school and in the beginning of high school, I guess you could say that I was depressed- I had a very hard time sleeping, I was extremely irritable and yelled at my family for the smallest things, and I felt sluggish and lazy. I became happier when I started dating my ex-boyfriend, even though I would still feel sluggish- and I started to cry randomly like my mom did when I was little! Also, I usually had this underlying feeling of guilt about something I couldn't pinpoint. I went to a psychiatrist when I was 17, who perscribed me 5 or 10 mg of adderall, I can't remember which. I hadn't been taking it for very long (maybe a month or two) when one night I started crying uncontrollably for three hours and I couldn't stop- I had no idea why! Nothing unusual or bad had just happened, so I didn't know why I was crying. I stopped taking the aderall after that. After my ex boyfriend and I broke up, I think my depression turned into anxiety. Instead of feeling sad and sluggish, I had too much energy and felt restless. The break-up wasn't a bad one, we just kind of grew apart- but I gave myself such a hard time about it that I made it a bad break up for myself- I was just too stubborn I guess to let myself have an easy break up even though I know I could have. That was around the time that I developed OCD, I think- I never actually fell into a routine and it didn't matter which environment I was in or where I was, but sometimes I would make up "rules" (I guess that is what you could call them) for myself about doing certain tasks- like, if I was throwing something away in a trash can, I would have to go back, take it out, and throw it away again. The rules and tasks always changed to accomodate where I was or what I was doing as I went about my daily endeavors. That's what I mean when I say that it wasn't a ritual of, say, brushing my teeth 5 times every morning, so I don't know if it's OCD. Also, for most of high school and up till now, I have always been awkward and have had a hard time communicating and having relationships with people. I guess I just think too much about what I should say in a conversation to actually be myself. In a group of people or at a party, I would feel anxious and self-concious, and then when someone talked to me I wouldn't know what to say, so I never actually said what I would say if I weren't so self-conscious about what I would say, if that makes sense. After my boyfriend and I broke up, I didn't really feel like being around people because I missed our relationship so much, but I think that is normal if you just came out of a long-term relationship.
Anyways, I don't know at which point I started to become really worried about my health and scared of developing some sort of disease, but for the past few years I have gone through cycles of being worried about different diseases: brain tumor, MS, AIDS, and when I had mono I was so scared about my spleen bursting that I couldn't sleep at night for months after wards. (I am finally getting to my point, I promise!) Recently, as in the past several months, I have been SO anxious that I am going to develop schizophrenia. This post is REALLY long because I wanted to say all the reasons why I am worried that I will develop it. Because I am so worried about getting certain illnesses I research those illnesses a lot on the internet (doesn't really help my cause, I know) and when I read about who gets schizophrenia and how, I got even more scared than I usually do when I am worried about a disease. My anxiety about developing schizophrenia has turned into an obsession... I mean, I spend so much time researching about it and reading forums by people who think they have it and have all these crazy symptoms. I don't even know what I would do if I had the same symptoms that some of these people have... like seeing demons and hearing people telling you to hurt yourself... I am SO scared of these hallucinations, and of waking up one day and hearing voices, becoming unreasonably paranoid and delusional, or of going crazy. Another reason why I am so scared and anxious of developing it is because I know that smoking marijuana can help bring about schizophrenia. In high school, I smoked marijuana sometimes but not a lot- I could probably count the number of times that I smoked it and I think it is close/around ten. Around the time my ex-boyfriend and I broke up, I smoked on a certain occasion and had a horrible reaction. I was scared at the time because I didn't know what it was but I think it was a panic attack just made a million times worse because I was high. I was screaming and my heart was racing so fast and I just thought I was going to die... it was horrible. After that, I didn't smoke for a year but I smoked a year later just to see if it would happen again and the same thing did. It wasn't AS bad, because I had gone through the same thing once before, but I have not and WILL not touch marijuana ever again. But now that I think about it, I never had a panic attack until after that first bad reaction. Although it's been half a year since I have had a panic attack, last year I went through a whole month of horrible panic attacks and I went to the hospital several times because I couldn't calm down on my own- I needed reassurance that it it was only panic and that I was ok. Like I said, I never had a problem with anxiety or panic until that first bad reaction to marijuana.
What I don't understand is that things are going SO much better for me now... I am over the grip I had on the relationship my ex-boyfriend and I had. I am really healthy.. I'm a vegetarian and I try to eat organic food as much as possible and I work out a lot. I do really well in school. I am more outgoing and I have been able to get closer to people because I am finally letting myself. Both my parents are happy and my dad stopped his alcoholism when I was little, so I haven't been exposed to it since then. Also, I even stopped my "OCD" for the most part. I just don't know why I am SO ANXIOUS AND OBSESSED AND SCARED OF GETTING SCHIZOPHRENIA!???
Some more information I feel like I have to share... in the past few months I have been seeing floaters and blobs of color that look like floaters. It wasn't until I started reading about schizophrenia that I got scared about them. Also, you know when you look at a bright object and look away, you see the negative outline of it? I have been seeing the negative outline of images that aren't bright! For example, I was sitting in class last week listening and watching my professor speak, and when I looked away for a second I saw his negative outline! Also, over the past two weeks I have been seeing little flecks of movement out of the corner of my eye. For example, while I was typing this I saw this black speck of movement near my hand that I thought was a fly or a bug or something but when I went to look it was nothing. Before I started reading about schizophrenia that never happened to me, so I don't know if I'm scaring myself or if I am going crazy. Speaking of going crazy... a few times I felt confused and I felt like I was going crazy to the point that I had to think about my actions and double check that they were normal and I was distraught if someone would talk to me, I wouldn't hear them at first.
Even when I smoked I have never, ever hallucinated, as far as I know, and from what I have read/heard I would know if I ever experienced a hallucination. I haven't been able to relax because I keep searching for voices in my head or things to see that aren't really there. I don't THINK I have heard any voices in the past few weeks, but I don't know! WHY am I so scared about this!? I know that people who actually have schizophrenia don't think they have it, but I really AM seeing floaters and things jerking out of the corner of my eye.
I'm really really scared that I will develop/am developing schizophrenia. I am also scared that if I don't stop this excessive worrying that I WILL turn it into schizophrenia- I feel like if I really want to hear voices/ am looking to hallucinate, that I eventually will. And I REALLY don't want that to happen. Please, if you are a psychiatrist with experience and can give your insight, I would appreciate it so much. I would also appreciate suggestions for stopping this unreasonable worrying. Thank you!
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