Hello,

I'm 20 and I've just moved out and into my own flat at a university halls of residence and there was this one evening where I felt increasingly like I was being watched in my room, as if people upstairs were watching me through the floor. I wrote on my laptop screen in a very large font: “ARE YOU WATCHING ME? If you are please tell me because otherwise I’ll think that I’m paranoid. You won’t be in trouble but if you don’t tell me I will have to go to see a psychiatrist. This could be very serious.” I stood in the middle of the room holding the laptop and moving it around so that wherever they were watching me from, they could see it. Just as I started to look at myself and think: “WTF am I doing?”, they started arguing about whether they should reveal their secret! I sat back listening to this argument about whether they should tell me they were watching me or not, until I got a headache and fell asleep.

That was the last time anything really weird happened and that was a few months ago now, but I used to be convinced people were reading my mind when I sat on the bus to college each day for a year before that as I could hear them whispering to each other about what I was thinking – there was this constant feeling that they were searching my mind and although I tried to suppress these thoughts I felt incredibly panicky and twitched a lot. Each day, I could hear the whispering get louder and more intense and of course at some point they must have been real because I was just so agitated, I came up with theories about what sort of people had the ability to read my mind and oh man I was going crazy - but it's more obvious that that was insane now. When I go outside, It does still feel like people are looking at me and whispering 'oh my god' to each other.

Recently I've got a bit better at keeping these sounds out but in halls the walls are of course paper thin and on some nights it sounds like a flatmate is calling someone to try and have me sectioned – I can't be sure whether that's a hallucination or not, If I admit it is then I'm mad, and if it's real it's not a good sign! (unless of course it's some kind of cruel trick, or am I just being paranoid heh heh)

I don't know whether to see a doctor, as I really really don't want to end up in a hospital, I think I could keep this under control but maybe some drugs might help? Thing is, I'm doing really well at uni getting A* grades in almost all my modules and helping out with a research project, but I'm worried taking drugs will stop me from doing the work. Although I guess lots of people are taking illicit drugs, I've always stayed away from those as I'm worried about them making things much worse. If I did get labelled, would employers have to know about it?
Of course there's the massive emotional upheaval for my family if I end up being diagnosed with, say, schizophrenia.
I guess I'll need to control my paranoia if I'm to be fit for an office environment. And. I get the feeling my mother is quite against psychiatrists too, although I've never talked to her or anyone else for that matter about this.

Many people seem to think I'm a crack addict or alcoholic, it's kind of a joke but I can see they really do think I'm weird. I'm hoping that if I take a calm, reasoned approach to this I'll be able to work out how bad things really are and what I need to do without causing the massive life-changing upheaval that getting psychiatric help would surely bring. Possibly this could be like a sort of phase, like when I was in my first year at secondary school (about 8 years ago now) I think I got a bit obsessive about making sure everything was straight and symmetrical, and if I touched my left hand I had to touch my right hand with exactly the same amount of pressure and... well I got past it after a few months in the end by forcing myself to be deliberately messy and unsymmetrical.

Anyway, I don't know what to do I know you are going to tell me to go and see a doctor but really I don't know how bad it is and all I have is the memories of feeling paranoid it doesn't happen to the same degree every day. I know that people with schizophrenia don't get jobs, and I think I have a real shot at being a games programmer – I'm already involved in a start-up company over the internet although I've already accused one of my colleagues of plotting against me because I felt he was trying to make me feel out of the loop.

I could go on about how I lost my summer job because I thought there was a body in the cupboard and hidden camera behind a mirror, or how I talked to people at school in a made up language or the fact I've had very few friends so far, and that people have mentioned to me that I move my lips when I walk around but I guess there's only so much people are going to read.