OCD/Anxiety or paranoia ? Scared of developing schizophrenia.

[Lilly13]

Hi all,

So I work with people with schizophrenia for a living, I am a social support worker. I love my job and I love the people who I work with.

I was previously scared that I was developing schizophrenia, this began when I first experienced the symptom of anxiety called Depersonalization/Derealization. This lasted for 2 years, I was scared I was becoming paranoid, I was scared I was seeing people who weren't there ( I wasn't, I was just afraid.) With time I eventually got over this fear. However, it has randomly returned... I began hearing a voices/noises upon first waking, it will just be a word like "YO" or "Wake up." IT has only happened twtice now, and it is always when I am just waking but still half asleep so I assume this is a hypogonic hallucination.

However, I work with a dude who used to be addicted to a bunch of drugs and I don't really like him or trust him. Today he offered me a coffee, and upon taking a sip I had a thought... "what if he drugged this coffee.." I could not calm myself down about a) the fact that I was now feeling out of because I had been drugged and b) the fact that I had this paranoid and irrational thought.


Please provide me with your input, I am a little worried that I even had this thought... is this a common OCD fear? Or is this a paranoid thought?

[sammie13s]

I'm having this myself. My mind is doing over time like repetive thinking, words getting stuck in my head and constantly having conversations with myself over and over again and now I'm thinking I'm losing it. Everything seems dream like and I too I the derealisation/depersonalisation. It's very frightening. I get aggitated and feel angry. I don't hear things or see things but I do keep questioning myself as to am I really losing it? What if I'm talking to myself and I don't realise I'm doing it and people can hear me? Fed up of being this way. My life is being ruined by it 😪

[Emilym80]

Lilly,

I always get paranoid when I'm anxious. Really paranoid. Like, thinking my mum drugged my tea paranoid. I've always been told that it's a normal part of anxiety for some people and to be honest (as you probably know) if you were developing schizophrenia, in all likelihood you wouldn't realise to begin with.

Btw the hallucinations at night are definitely hypnagogic. I've had those and described my quote extreme paranoia to my therapist and she says I wouldn't make it through the triage process at the psychosis treatment centre she works at.

All the best :)

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi Lilly,

You've done a great job of putting others right about schizophrenia before and I'm sure you will resolve this issue too.

Its true that there is a Pure O version of OCD for development of more serious mental illnesses but many people can suffer elements of a disorder without warranting a formal diagnosis and at times of higher levels of anxiety, things easily get distorted. So, I wouldn't say OCD at this point unless you already have OCD in which case its a latch on issue, especially if you have contamination issues within OCD I guess.

It sounds like a bit of paranoia to me. You probably know a lot more about paranoia than most people with your career so I'll just say that I have found it occurs more when in more severe stages of anxiety when I had it. I've seen a few others on here with it too and it seems to be at a more stressed stage. So, has your anxiety been worse recently?

Hearing voices, seeing images of things that are not there, exploding head syndrome, etc are all well documented in hypnogogia. Hypnogogia is for when you are falling asleep (and it can occur within a couple of hours of going to sleep too) and there is a separate name for the waking version (hypnopompia) but they tend to both get called hypnogogia in general.

I don't usually add links on the HA board but with your career (and understanding), this Wiki link explains it well so use it to counteract those fears:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

Before we had anxiety, if we thought we heard someone way our names we would think "just the mind playing tricks" but you certainly notice stuff like this more when heightened. Typical fight of flight really.