Fear of schizophrenia (Page 2)

gus i really feel you but i have the solution cause i did it and it worked, i charge no many and it cost you nothing. give it a try and see yourself. first we can build a discussion over any those chat room, trust me guyss it will help because we goona talk , discuss, by then you will understand your sistuation, i been thru the same thing before. anyway if intersted add me to your yahoo messnger, mine is greensboro_2008 please when u add me write me inform me that you are coming from so i can add you, may god bless you all

I'm 15 and extremly scared of becoming schizo because my uncle had it. And I'm extremely worried of myself having it after I was on the Right track from school getting a 3.5 then I dropped out into independent study I was extremely happy then I was thizzing alot to self medicate myself I'm seeing a therapist for over 4 years due to my past history of depression but after my drug rampage I feel like I'm doomed and I can't be back to my normal happy self.. I'm obsessing over this situation but I'm hopeful I'll get better Ive been constantly looking up signs and symptoms over the Internet and worrying if this is happening to me but after reading several posts I know that I will be ok I also can't enjoy anything anymore and feel cut off and can't relate to people like there's a wall in front of me and I also don't have any feelings of attraction and I feel like I have a hard time having conversations my therapist says I'm fine and it's just due to my anxiety and depression Ive been sober for over a month now and Im doing way better than I have before is it because of the drugs that I have been feeling like this ?

I am going through the same thing. Just like all of you. It is a nasty thing to go through. I smoked incense in september and it sent me on a bad trip that night. ever since, it's been obsessive thinking, high anxiety and depression.It has hampered my relationship with my father and my sister. It has caused me to lose track of time and feel like i am not a part of society. But expressing your emotions shows you are not schizophrenic. It is simply a misconception brought on by today's information based society. You all have the internet to use to fuel your fears just like I did for quite some time until it got less and less frequent. I went to the emergency room 5 times via ambulance when I had panic attacks thinking I was doomed and life was over. I have to rebuild, but just know by fearing this Mental Illness, you don't and won't ever have it. Anxiety is just a part of today's operating society. Get back into society and set goals. I am just now beginning to realize that you can't develop schizophrenia if you fear developing it. It just can't happen. Thank you for all of your posts. It has helped me, even in my stern expressionless face at this moment, that I will live on and carry a normal life.Normalcy is something we all seek because we have known what it is like to feel normal and when things seems bad or odd or terrible, we obsess. So if you will excuse me, I am going to continue onward to become who i want to without these obsessions in my way.

Im so glad I'm not alone, and I really feel everybody on this one. I'm this is super long, but i feel like I want to get my thoughts/situation down for my own comfort and hopefully someone else in the same boat may find it helpful or comforting if they want to read it. Really though, Im so glad that this forum is here!

I moved to LA for college last year from the middle of a quiet peaceful forest. I couldnt take all the people and all the noise and just seeing the world like that in general. From my native forest, living in LA was like being stuck in some insane post modern land of craziness. I had insomnia, nightmares when i did sleep and could never concentrate so i self medicated with weed up to several times a week which i had used sparingly and effectively in highschool to keep things lighthearted and fun. I also self medicated with psychedelics several times because if i took them in a good setting, i'd kinda of find ultimate peace with everything around me and didn't do weed for a couple weeks afterwards. I had done psychedelics before too and i had never been effected in any intense way, just kind of usually feel really chill and spiritual and see how beautiful so many things are.

But then after several weeks I'd rebuild the same fears over again. I was also super insecure, didnt know what to do with myself emotionally, felt very ungrounded like i was always needing someone to lean on. I was falling behind in OChem so I decided to trip to pull myself together so i could really study hard. But there was too much pressure, i had a horrible trip, relentlessly quizzed myself on ochem while i was feeling like the most horrible emotional pain of self hatred. After the trip, i was a nervous wreck and thought I was just going to have too much anxiety too function. On the plus side, was that after i tripped, I came clean to a friend about everything i needed to sort out in my life/emotional reality and all my insecurities I had been harboring up and how i really just wasn't happy anymore. I kind of denied so many of my issues. Then one girl on my floor was talking about how she was having auditory hallucinations like a week later, and the psychosis/schizophrenia idea popped into my head and i couldn't let it go even though and thinking about it pretty much generated a panic attack .

I would blow everything into evidence that i was going in the psychotic direction. I researched it relentlessly, and thought about it obsessively. I'd automatically generate thoughts about it and if i said it wasn't happening, well, id just generate another thought like "that's what they ALL say. You're going crazy". Because I had researched so much, I knew exactly what thoughts to generate, even though i full well knew that the only reason why I was having those thoughts was because I was so set on the idea that i was going psychotic. Like before i'd eat, id automatically think "this is poisoned" even though that thought had no emotional weight, i just started having it after i had been reading up on the thoughts that paranoid schizophrenics generally have. I became so scared of all my thoughts, and even the way i think, daydream, visualize things. I had done extensive research on drug use and psychosis and many scientists are quick to point out that there is a clear link, which seems intuitive given the nature of the experiences certain drugs produce. However, it really seems that it only exacerbates/speeds up the process if u have a family history (which I do not), rather than cause it. And perhaps its not even that, but just people who are somewhat pre psychotic are more drawn to certain substances. There were such huge increases in cannabis/psychedelic use in the 60's/70's but no increase in psychosis rates, so the research is kind of unclear even though there is statistical correlation. Best interpretation, i think, is that its just another risk factor to avoid if u have a family history (as is moving to a city, btw). But the fact that I had those two risk factors kind of freaked me out more eventhough I had no family history. I had such nightmares and fleeting visual disturbances because of my anxiety. Like I'd turn around super fast expecting to see someone when it was just the corner of my eye catching my glasses frames, or get weird little shiny black stars zooming in towards the center of my vision in absolute panic mode. And thinking about not thinking about it did not help, that made it worse, because that is pretty much the equivalent to thinking about it.

I went to a therapist who really helped me out so much during the summer, and kind of just cut through my anxiety. When i went back to school in the fall, i spiraled into a sort of depression though, probably just because i had really hard classes all of which i really did not like at all, and still hadn't really found my place emotionally and was still insecure and felt needy, always just looking for a girlfriend and feeling that my friend was avoiding me when he totally wasn't and i knew . I had a therapist who did not help at all and really i think made things worse because she kept pressing me for details and clearly did not understand my anxiety and i think was just kind of a horrible judge of people in general. One plus about this depression period is that i knew full well then that I was not and could not go crazy. Any break with reality then would have been most welcome compared to the predicament i was in, i felt. But unfortunately, reality was there, solid and depressing as ever. Nope, psychosis not happening, at this point sometimes much to my dismay. And I also kind of realized that horrible psychedelic trips are infamous for triggering a psychotic episode during or right afterwards in people who's brains have the capability of becoming psychotic. The studies that were done show that it's temporary and u completely recover after the trip induced psychotic experience, unless u have a very close relative with psychosis. I didn't have a psychotic break after/during the trip when I felt so insanely nervous, so if i was gonna have a psychotic break, i think i should have done so then.

This quarter has been much better, like i know what happiness feels like now and it is SOOO worth it. I think its ultimately a decision to stop generating all those negative/anxiety inducing thoughts and a decision to look at things positively. But its not a matter of just deciding, yeah we'd all decide that if it was a matter of checking a box. U kind of have to feel why its worth doing that, and taste how great the healthy anxiety and depression free reality is. Like i think we dont, on a subconscious level, want to let go of unhealthy thought patterns unless we know that there's something much more enticing waiting for us on the other side. like we like our unhealthy patterns, they are sort of a horrible security blanket, bad but familiar.

All this being said, stress and anxiety kind of creep up on me from no where even if im not acutely conscious of it. Like I'll start planning way too excessively, being more uptight and having nightmares without having the physical feeling of anxiety and biting nails and picking skin. This has started happening to me for the last couple weeks and now, with it comes the deep seeded fear that im going to go schizo. it doesnt matter what i tell myself. Im not having panic attacks over it now, but i still generate the thoughts and try to blow everything into evidence. Even imagining a conversation i need to have with someone in my head will generate thoughts that im going crazy for being able to "hear" voices in my head. I sometimes think it would be easier for me if I actually did somehow manage to have a real psychotic break so i could just get rid of the fear, admit that i have it, and go to a psychiatrist and get help. Or just go to a psychiatrist and pretend i had a psychotic episode, so i could get a diagnosis and help i don't actually need. I can take my mind off it completely, think about other things, but then when I get a chance, i remember my fear and the whole thought generations start over again. It's so tiring. I'm so tired of it, really. It's like I'll never be able to completely seal up that fear. I sometimes research things as if i have a psychotic mental health issue and find lifestyle/diet things that have proven to be helpful to other people. Omega 3 supplements (which i had bought anyway just for general health and wellbeing) apparently help against psychosis development but now im making sure to take them. I wanna be chilled out and happy again like I was a couple weeks ago, I didnt need THIS stuff to happen again. But ehh, I find nature and wildlife and yoga really reviving. And having the brute determination of NOT GIVING UP and not letting it ruin you is definitely important. Sometimes I laugh at myself a bit. My only delusion is that I'm going delusional...
Best of luck and peace to everyone.

Oh and btw, Mlee542, ive researched this so much, ill tell u, that E doesn't seem to be linked to psychosis or schizophrenia at all from what ive found. In fact everything I could find said that it was a potential treatment for it because it would help with the fear and distrust of other people and lack of emotional expression.

I had this same exact experience, and im currently undergoing post traumatic stress...

One night i was smoking marijuana, and i thought to myself why does everyone think im weird when im high? truth was im not weird, im just so happy i don't really care what others think. Well i began searching on the web Marijuana, and the brain, what i found was schizophrenia. I thought to myself do i have schizophrenia?... I did a little more research and read little quotes saying like your, your self, and hearing things ect... Let me just clarify that i was high. And when im high i don't exactly feel like my self. My vision, hearing ect. is different when im high. So i thought to myself... i have schizophrenia! I started having bad anxiety, and got really depressed... I just thought to myself... im fine, i just need to relax, watch tv, and go to sleep. I will be fine when i wake up, this is just a trip... Well that didn't work... That was like 2 months ago... i fight my anxiety daily... its changed me ... I swear ive lost 10 pounds if not more, had to quit caffeine completely, and i care more about my self than ever before... I even got into a fight with my dad just because he refused to take me to the hospital... And im currently undergoing anxiety while typing this... Its a living hell... And it doesn't help to remind yourself that your different because that just causes more anxiety and depression... Oh well i guess bye to the old me, and in with the new... Its just hard to accept this new me because its hard to go out anywhere, all i can do is worry... Seems like home is so beautiful.

What helps me is taking a page out of Buddhist philosophy, and thinking that it's just a thought. Nothing more, a meaningless thought, and I don't care about it or the fact im having it. like if you think to urself "oh this food is poisoned" or "i must be hallucinating" then you can calm urself down by saying "whatever, just a meaningless thought, not in my control that im having it, but i dont need to be scared of it." helps a lot for me. i'd suggest not getting high, not because, well two things, it makes "mental noise" worse, and it will also exacerbate ur fear, just because you now that you know that theres a statistical correlation between schizo and weed. but yeah, that feeling (esp. when ur high) when you think that everyone else thinks you're crazy and loopy...that's harsh, ive experienced that before.

I too have this fear. The worst part is that I'm a psychology student and I am supposed to know more about this disease than the average Joe. However, for me, the fact that I studied it in school doesn't seem to help. I know what the symptoms are, what the average age of onset is for men and women...etc...I obsess with it all day. I fear that I will start to have delusions, that I will have to be institutionalized. I feel that I constantly have to watch myself just in case I become violent or something. I try not to give those thoughts too much atention. However, it doesnt stop the fear itself. You can always say " yeah, whatever..." to your thoughts but how do you get rid of the problem underlying it. How do you get rid of the fear???

Well from meditation classes that i have attended, what we learnt is that a feeling, fear or anger, it actually only lasts for a second naturally, unless there are thoughts that u pay attention to to fuel that emotion, and what happens is then those thoughts re-evoke the fear or anger which then re-evokes the thoughts, so it's a cycle. But if u just admit that ur thoughts have become habitual like just you've wired ur mind in such a way where pretty much every stimulus, it could be a fuzzy puppy or a bicycle or your uncle bob will lead to those thoughts and its out of ur control, an involuntary , unconscious habit. If you ignore those thoughts, and tell urself when u have them "hey, its not my fault im thinking this, this isnt a conscious thought of mine, it's a nervous mental tick" then any anxiety will just be a stab of anxiety that lasts for a fleeting second and not too troublesome. like anytime i felt the urge to research it or started running through symptoms or exploring the "what if" possibilities, i'd just kind of handle myself gently and realize that it wasnt my fault i was even thinking about that in the first place.

Wow, your account sounds remarkably similar to my experiences (w/ the whole 'obsessing about having stroke, seizure, schizo, etc.' & stress & anxiety & forehead sweating jazz) except 1) I'm widely considered crazy and 2) I've already have this persistent recurring thought that "aliens are watching me" which I've never read about in the literature but yet apparently this is a textbook positive symptom according to several web pages. Considering that this kind of worrying is OCD in nature, it's probably OCD, but OCD also co-occurs with schizophrenia at a rate higher than normal so it's possible to have both. Wouldn't that be funny to be obsessive-compulsive about having paranoid schizophrenia & then to actually develop it? Hmmm... I kind of wonder how many schizophrenics developed schizo thinking that they were becoming schizophrenic.

I have been having an unbelievably difficult time with this issue. I am so terrified of developing this illness that it consumes most of my mental energy. Thank you for all of your replies.

I'm also a psychology student.I know what the symptoms of schyzo are,the more I read or learn about stuff like that the more obsessing my thoughts get.The worst part is that I think I have hypnagogic hallucinations,before I go to sleep (if I haven't drank a couple of beers) I keep having these thoughts of someone saying something weird or even a kinda of conversation,or hear music or have somekind of visualisation.I don't really "hear" something,I know these are my thoughts and my mind,and I don't believe the things that are happening are real,but I panic and can't sleep.Actually if I ignore vhats happening the next morning I vont remember vhat happened.
It all started vhen I vas reading about lsd and symptoms of schyzo.It's really obsessing.One night I couldn't stop thinking and googled it and found a forum where some guy said this could be a sign of schyzo since then whenever I get relaxed an idea pops out "oh you stop thinking" and I start over.I read that if you fear those hypnagogic hallucinations you just fuel them,and I can't stop fearing and it makes it a cycle.
I think that if I was crazy I would believe that what's happening is true and have delusions,but I don't.
Sorry for the really bad english.

Hello Ins0m1a,

Here is a story of hope...

I had a very similar experience to yours. I was taking a psychology course, and loving every bit of it, until we started learning about abnormal psychology. The professor (a stupid cow) was talking about schizophrenia in the most grim way...saying how it is cancer of the mind, and how medications do not help etc etc. She offered no hope at all. She terrified me...I nearly had a panic attack right then and there! I am convinced that if she put this some positivity in her lecture I would have been okay.
Anyways, I became convinced that I was going to get it. For the next 2 years my anxiety was at 10! I was just waiting to hear a voice in my head...always listening to sounds around me and trying to determine if they are real. Just like you, I had experienced hypnagogic hallucinations before bed...for example, once I heard someone calling my name loud and clear. It actually woke me up and I had to calm myself down.
However, the worst experience had to be while I was riding the bus on the way to school. I heard a (real) sound that I convinced myself was not real and was sure that I had lost it! I got off the bus and I was so terrified that I kept hearing that sound over and over again...at least 3 more times. I think that I was in such state of trauma, over fixated on that sound that I kept hearing it repeatedly. I nearly fainted. Needless to say, I was sure I had developed schizophrenia. The next few days were a hell and I don't know how I survived them.
However, now I know that those sounds I had heard were due to extreme anxiety...hallucinations are normal during such times. I have never heard any sounds that didn't exist again and it has been 7 years since then.
I somehow managed to get out of obsessing about getting schizophrenia for good.
What helped?

1. Well, I was deathly afraid of hearing voices that don't exist thinking that voices would definitely signal that I am schizophrenic. One day I found a website that claims that 10% of all people do hear voices once in a while, but have no mental health problems. They even have their own support group...you can google it. Anyways, they put a positive spin on the whole voice hearing thing.

2. Now I know that anxiety / depression can cause auditory hallucinations as well, so if I ever heard one, it wouldn't necessarily mean I am schizophrenic.

3. Finally, effective schizophrenia treatment does exist for most people, and I have heard of bi-polar schizophrenics running their own business. So there is hope after all.

Having some positivity and hope when it comes to schizophrenia made me less afraid and I finally stopped thinking about it. However, having this fear changed my life forever... I really wanted to study psychology but gave up because I didn't want to know more about schizophrenia. I was so scared at that time.

You can get better! Just find your own way:)

Oh and by the way, the hypnagogic hallucinations have also completely stopped or are totally insignificant if they even happen. All the best!!!!

Wow incredible to read this good to know people have the exact same things this about sums it up, and another forum brought me to the realization I have OCD

Just changed my life reading this thanks a lot good to know theres many more not just me

These posts really helps a lot! im happy to know im not the only one. Though I still have a lot of anxiety and stuff about getting schizo, I know its anxiety thanks to all of your posts! I have this huge fear of it but i know cbt and pills can help. I have a question for everyone, do you think pills is a bad option for anxiety? My teacher once told me that just cause you take pills it doesn't change you, all that is wrong with you is a chemical imbalance. idk it makes me feel better thinking about it like this. Any help will be good! Anyone who wants to talk message me or ask my email it would be nice to talk to others about this!

Think about it this way,
If you never knew about it, you wouldn't be scared of it.


It is scary! There is good reason to fear it, but not on an irrational level. Your odds of being schizo are slim, and even with it you can be happy and healthy (in some ancient cultures schizophrenics were revered for their unique perspectives)

A psych prof I used to have would always say that "halfway through my class everyone will be convinced they are crazy. Just don't keep spending all your days freaking out that it might happen and it will more than likely not kid. Stay strong, I love psychology but it will do this to you (I majored in it and the sensation doesn't go away, the fear that you might be reading an exacted description of yourself) you just realize its normal and learn to treat it that way.
You're only afraid of becoming crazy because you are so in love with your sanity You're normal