This is an email that I sent a while ago about this problem that i have for a guy that has a blog where they help folks differentiate between ocd and other mental illneses, BUT MY MIND IS A JERK AND STILL DONT FULLY BELIEVE THAT IM NOT SCHIZOPHRENIC. so i would like your opinion too guys
My name is Austin, a 20 y/o dentistry student and if you could take sometime to read this and give me an opinion it would be like an angel for me.
Im contacting you because i've been reading your blog and it saved me from endless thoughts of doom about my condition. I think i have what is called "Schizo-OCD" But i haven't been legally diagnosed as such. I have sheer fear of beign schizophrenic, psychotic or delusional, it all started because a panic attack that I got from smoking a very strong weed strain and following DP/DR. After getting the DP as the anxious person that I am I started googling everything that happened to me to see if anyone had similar experiences, in fact I found many of them. and everything was """""fine""""" until I read the following -"DP/DR can be a symptom of schizophrenia" and my world fell down, i was in panic for 2 days and since then i've been fearing that I unleashed schizophrenia on my brain or that im going to have it soon. I've read TONS and TONS of cases and blogs and papers on the subject, it occupies most of my mind when im alone.
So to give it a little order here is what i suffer from
Delusional Intrusive Thoughts: This is the most prominent symptom that I have and i think is because is the least disputable, i can tell myself that I just imagined an hallucination, but i cannot say to myself that I didnīt thought that thought. They focus on the "Paranoid Schizo" Department because i'ts the kind of schizophrenia that I fear the most. Thoughts like "there are cameras on every corner" or "someone is watching me" or "someone can read my mind", the first thing beign impossible and out of any context, the second thing being alone which is ridiculous or beign on the street which is also ridiculous because im not invisible, and the third which i dont know if it's impossible but i truly dont believe that (until my second line of thought says "what if you believe it". I fiercely resist these thoughts as they are implausible and straightfoward nuts. (then my mind start to make me doubt if im on denial and i truly believe them) THEY ARE ALL EGO-DYSTONIC AND VERY RESISTED. (But i still doubt if i believe them or not :( )
The funny thing is that when I read that ocd thoughts are presented as "what if's" they stopped beign what if's and started to appear as affirmations (thing that scared me a lot) it's like some part of me wants to become psychotic which i dont want.
Also i've never had this ideas before, i hope (because i also doubt it) that they where fueled to my imagination as I was reading stories and delusions from schizophrenic people, in fact they pretty much mimic what they felt and believed (Until my mind,dunno, like learned how to make delusions on it's own, just like it learned how to make schizo associations)
Imaginary Hallucinations: since teenagery I was interested on the mind, and I started meditation, mindfulness, introspection, visualization, and the development of a rich imagination (WHICH NOW IS A ****ING BURDEN)
since my cannabic panic attack ive been imagining how it would be like to see and hear things (which i think is a form of my subconcious to prepare me for the worst). They are very allegorical and they are what i think schizos see and hear. And they stop when I get distracted which is a luxury that i think schizos dont have. (and i think that beign schizo only when i remember it it's not very legit). I can also visualize in rich detail things, faces and persons, as well i can imagine very well sounds and songs. When they appear I doubt if they are products of my scared imagination or real hallucinations, so what i do is controlling them with my mind and always succeed which tells me that they are in fact my imagination (but i have the fear that I someday forget or lose conciousness about that). I can also have imagined tactile sensations, not very detailed but still.
Irrational Doubt and Tortured Logic: this is the thing that glues all together and holds me in my own hell, the fact that i cant talk myself out of this and whenever i try to do so i end up worse, what i mean by worse is that everytime that i try to rationalize a "delusion" its like my mind finds ways to make me doubt if i really dont believe it or worse find """""reasons""""" to believe it which are completely unrelated to the subject or far away connected to it. also it sees every little possibillity of actually beign schizo as "THAT IS ME, THAT 0.0000001% IS ME". This actually happened on one of your posts in which you said that you met one case of a 20 y/o person who developed OCD at 19 (almost same age as me) and got full blown psychosis 2 years later (which im still waiting because this shit has been on my head like 3 months ago) and that scares me.
A thing that saves me from that is that in the post you said that his thoughts was ego-syntonic. mine are hated like the plague, full ego-dystonic (and i also fear that they might become ego-syntonic in the future).
Hyperawareness of everything: I monitor everything, every sight, everything that I hear, every thought, association and feeling surveilling for something out of place, which is paradoxical because if i where truly psycho i would not realize it (although i've read some articles on people where fully aware of their psychosis, which i think i'ts illogical but OCD makes me doubt). it has happened to me that I hear a sound that i think is an hallucination and 2 seconds after it someone said "what was that sound?" so that means im putting hallucination labels where they dont belong (which also makes me feels kinda nutty).
I've also have been on therapy for like 2 months, and my psychologyst said to me that everyone can get psychotic in a defensive mode when witnessing horrors which was a health indicator of the mind rather that illness, but he could not see any traces of schizophrenia on me (i trust him, but i dont know if in the future i will develop the disorder or not). He also didn't said to me that I had OCD, its what im using to explain all of this. I was diagnosed "Mild anxiety and Mild depression" 5 years ago by a psychiatrist, put me on some meds that made me feel strange, so I decide not to keep on them and solve the problem myself (which i did). I got no psychotic illness on my family, but we have a lot of anxiety disorders on it and one or two depressive persons .
If you take the time to read the full mail I want you to know that im thankful from the bottom of my heart, im now having no problems to take a normal life but this thoughts occupy long periods on my head, distracting me from studies and i fear that they will become worse, I also have fear of an actual misdiagnose of schizophrenia (like in some part of me deep down knows that im not psycho, but im fearing that someday that will not be what's on the surface, or that will become true someday).
So if you can help me i will be enormously thankfull. I'll wait for your response
Austin.
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Originally Posted by scareeed
