Sensitive to noise, fear of schizo [Archive]

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ChocoOrange

02-10-15, 00:51

So for the past two weeks or so I've been fearing going schizophrenic. I've been incredibly sensitive to if I have symptoms that are similar to those of schizophrenia, I've been struggling with intrusive thoughts for a few weeks too, which is really how this whole fear of schizophrenia started. I've seen my GP twice about the fear of schizophrenia and intrusive thoughts, and she mainly put my mind at rest over them (a few threads here helped, too). So I kinda know how to handle intrusive thoughts, don't give them attention and they'll go but of course a new fear and symptom arose moments after my mind was at rest. That was the question of am I hearing things? If there's a faint noise or someone speaks in a different room I have to ask someone if they also heard it or if it's in my head and I'm actually schizophrenic. It's now gotten to the point where seemingly random noises can startle me, if I'm sitting at my PC not doing much then a random noise happens (eg. someone talking in another room) it pretty much startles me and makes me question if I heard it and all of that. It has on a few occasions caused panic attacks for me. I was just wondering if anyone has experience or advice on the fear of schizophrenia, intrusive thoughts and being easily startled by sound and questioning if those sounds are actually real.

Thanks.

EDIT: I'm also on no medication for anxiety/mental health issues. I also mistake sounds for a split second, so I could misinterpret a sound for a second and think it's something else before realizing what it is. I also sometimes misread things or for a split second see random things, generally in text. I'll completely misread something

Holds1325

02-10-15, 03:02

Hi,

I deal with this occasionally and I first want to suggest speaking to a psychologist about this as they would kno better than any of us here.

Secondly, schizophrenia is a disorder in which people see or hear things that really arent there BUT they really believe they are and they dont know that they are hearing or seeing things.

I think what you are confusing this with is hallucinations which can be seen or heard. However these manifest usually in things like voices that are very distinct or visions of something actually there.

I had this where i swore i heard some people talking in another room, but it was a fan blowing or my imagination! Once i woke up and kept hearing a thumping sound and i was so scared i was hearing things, turned out to be my air conditioning after careful investigation, i still wasnt convinced though. Its just your mind playing tricks on you. Next time it happens, simply ignore it and move on, you only give more credit to the fear the more you give it attention,

Good luck

ChocoOrange

02-10-15, 03:09

Holds1325

02-10-15, 03:15

Yes that makes sense,

I will be sitting in my living room minding my own business and out of nowhere I thought i heard my wife talking to someone in another room. i was thinking hmm, wonder who she is talking to and i go and look, shes not even in there, infact she was sleeping that whole time! I then begin to wonder, oh no, am I going crazy?! why did i hear that??

Remember its just your mind playing tricks on you. People like us who are dealing with anxiety are already at a very heightened state of awareness of our surroundings. Its our bodies getting ready to defend/fight at the slightest threat we perceive so thats why sounds startle us so easily, just like bodily sensations which are dreadful as well.

Also important to note, people dealing with schizophrenia dont know theyre going crazy by the way, so the fact that youre scared of going crazy is just the anxiety screaming at you. Remember the fear of going crazy is one of the most common symptoms of anxiety.

ChocoOrange

02-10-15, 03:27

Holds1325

02-10-15, 03:34

ChocoOrange

02-10-15, 03:40

Yes memory and concentration is very difficult to keep in check when your mind is processing tons of worries at any moment.

I always forget what im doing, then i get worried i am going crazy, then i get worried im getting sick because i have memory loss etc.

The chain of worries can become relentless if you dont put a stop to them, just like intrusive thoughts. For example i will get some horrible ones and my brain will think, wait what is that thought? is there somethign wrong with me? the chain of worry begins! but if you just distract yourself, move on to something different eventually it leaves you alone.

Lately my worries are health related, but my worries used to be very similar to yours and they still catch me off guard here and there. Its really helpful to put a mental stop sign to the thoughs, as in a thought will pop up, hey am i hearing things?? most people go. ah proly nothing, those with anxiety like us, then ruminate and chain on thought after thought.

We get a thought like this, yeah just move on, it might come up again stronger but, keep moving on, eventually it gets easier

I've had health anxiety for like ~4 years(?) And it's always over one specific thing and when I get over one symptom, another seems to arise. Like just while speaking to you I was viewing something, swear I saw something odd but shrugged it off as misreading it. Then when I checked something else that thing was there! Like I'm psychic or something! I've read so much in to schizophrenia that now I think that's part of it because one website said that thinking you have special powers or something is a symptom of schizophrenia. It feels like I have to get through every single specific symptom I've read about if I'm to get over it, and judging by what I've read, schizophrenia has a ton of different symptoms. I'm sure it was just a coincidence but now that's on my mind, it really is a cycle!

Again, thank you for all the advice!

MyNameIsTerry

02-10-15, 05:52

I can jump in at that point with the special powers as I have had various forms of OCD and one of them was Magical Thinking. BUT with OCD you are doing something because you feel you must otherwise something bad will happen, and often you won't even know what that is.

So, someone with MT might feel they have to walk on the cracks in the pavement to avert a disaster of some kind or look at every third window. Things like that. The difference with this in schizophrenia is that they believe they really do have such powers whereas the person with OCD still knows they don't yet can't seem to stop themselves needing to do it.

In your case, you had an anxiety issue and then you went and saw it was there. That was connected to your fear. Someone with schizophrenia would indulge in it regardless. The same issues can be seen in people with delusions and before you ask - that isn't you either because you are questioning it, they don't as they believe it despite all the evidence you put in front of them.

---------- Post added at 05:42 ---------- Previous post was at 05:38 ----------

Like Holds said, when the fight or flight is engaged it heightens the senses. Keep that running for too long and you end up sensitised and your mind is searching for danger as opposed to reacting to it. This is when it's unhealthy.

Intrusive thoughts causing people to think they are schizophrenic is a known OCD form and intrusive thoughts are OCD spectrum (although anyone can have them, as proven in studies, we all have them yet don't notice).

It's really important not to react to them with fear but it's also important not to complete compulsions/rituals and you appear to be making checkings, a common compulsion in OCD. These checks will only reinforce it. They provide reassurance when really you don't need it and need to have confidence in yourself that they are not needed.

---------- Post added at 05:52 ---------- Previous post was at 05:42 ----------

Here are some more recent threads I know of where things like this and other triggers have been mentioned:

http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=170814&highlight=%2Aschiz%2A
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=173541&highlight=%2Aschiz%2A
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=164756&highlight=%2Aschiz%2A
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=168628&highlight=%2Aschiz%2A
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=169804&highlight=%2Aschiz%2A
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=161199

The last one, by avasmummy, is one of several she raised about her intrusive harm based thoughts. She started with HA, got used to coping with it and then had intrusive thoughts which greatly scared her. By understanding them more, it takes the sting out of them, although it does take some work to accept it as OCD.

If you want to read about coincidences and talk to current members going through that, TomT's threads on the OCD board are all about that. I think you might find them interesting because he was scared he could be getting a more serious mental health problem because of them and there are explanations for the things he was reading into e.g. he was paranoid about people he thought he had seen before but didn't take into account how the subconscious mind stores everything and recall it whilst the conscious mind may not have acknowledged the people in the first place.

ChocoOrange

02-10-15, 16:21

Thank you for all your advice. The thing just happened again, I had a dream where someone changed their name on YouTube then when I woke up they had a different name on something different but related. Is it possible I keep seeing these things but somehow forgetting about them? Like, I see something, don't really take it in consciously until I have a random thought about it and see it which then sends me in to panic? I do think it's a coincidence or that, I don't think I have super powers or anything but it concerns me that this is the start of schizophrenia or something.

Thanks again!

MyNameIsTerry

03-10-15, 04:49

Yes, it's very possible. Our eyes see everything in the picture frame, or ears here everything audible to them BUT we don't necessarily acknowledge them consciously. The subconscious stores things in memory that we may not have paid attention to, like someone's face as in TomT's example. When you see that person again your subconscious may find them in memory and you get a bit of deja vu out of it.

Dreams often feature things we have on our minds throughout the day before and the mind is busy resolving things during sleep to get everything "filed away" to renew you for the next day.

Also, I think you have to consider the fact you are making associations here between one thing and another and they are not a complete match. Something related to YouTube isn't the same as the exact change you pictured in your dream, thats you consciously making associations and ignored the differences, a typical Confirmation Bias style thing to do. You make the association which = match to my worries over anxiety = match to my worries of more serious mental illness.

Here is an example of something I have noticed happens to me quite a bit.

I'm on one of my daily walks at night and the street light I am walking past at the exact second I pass it, goes off. Or one that was off comes on.

Obviously I don't have such powers in my mind or body otherwise I would be using my dastardly superpowers for something more appropriate, like making cash drop out of the cash machines :noangel: Obviously, there isn't some bored utilities worker somewhere watching me on camera thinking "lets make this bloke thing he is doing this" for many reasons such as a) why keep being me?, b) I haven't asked others if it happens to them, c) it could only be one guy, it can't be a companywide conspiracy and d) I've worked in utilities for many years so I know it doesn't work like that even if someone did want to do it.

So, why does it happen? Who knows, it just does. It probably happens to loads of people but since I've not gone out and surveyed them, I don't know, but it does mean I can't assume it's me as I can't prove it doesn't happen to them. This is important because Confirmation Bias is looking for what evidence to what you already believe and not considering evidence against or evidence to disprove.

And I know for a fact I'm not draining the street light of it's power as I was just as knackered afterwards :roflmao:

ChocoOrange

04-10-15, 22:48

So I thought I was doing pretty well with the intrusive thoughts, I learnt not to fear them and they started to reduce drastically. Tonight however one caught me off-guard and sent me in to panic again. Do you have any advice on how to stop myself constantly checking? I'm always checking to see if I still fear the thoughts and I'm checking to see if I did actually hear something etc.

EDIT: Sometimes I have an intrusive thought where it's like "I hope X happens" and it's a bad thing, is this a form of intrusive thought or? This also causes me a great deal of concern. Sometimes I think about the thoughts I've had in the past actively or something similar, like I'll actively think about the horrible thoughts I've been having, I don't like "plan" them or anything but I find myself thinking about them (or thinking them in general) cognitively (I think that's the word). Is that common? Or is it a reason to be concerned? Sorry for all the questions! Also I swear I heard things tonight but I'm not particularly scared. Just thought I'd toss that in there. One last question, can intrusive thoughts change your dreams? I had a moment in my dreams that was someone similar to an intrusive thought. Sorry for all the questions!

MyNameIsTerry

06-10-15, 05:01

Checking to see if you actually heard something means cutting down the checks until you can completely stop them. Some people go all out and face the anxiety of not checking until they habituate to the anxiety and then it's easier to handle while they are resolving the obsession. But thats not very easy so just cutting down the number of checks and/or time spent in checking works too but requires discipline so you don't start sliding backwards. For the gradual reduction, record it so you don't lose track if you do this.

Checking if you fear the thoughts is more problematic since it's not so much a reactive process but a worrying process that goes on & on. This one can take some time as you need to rebuild self confidence that you OK hence it's about acceptance. I think this is where Mindfulness works really well because it will teach you how to accept but also to observe during practical exercises. I would suggest you try it, I think it is as excellent tool for obsessive disorders like OCD.

Cutting down time with mental checks that are less reactive can mean looking towards some healthy behaviours so that you spend less time thinking and more time doing. So, hobbies and engrossing things can help here. It's not a distraction thing, although that is part of the outcome, because distraction techniques are a bit hit & miss with OCD. I've read articles about how they have to be carefully used in ERP therapy too or they can develop into new compulsions. They can also be a bugbear anyway if you compulsions are many as they end up taking longer and become impractical. I couldn't use them, they would have made things far harder for me so I looked more for healthy activities. I started walking and whilst that allows for a lot of time in your head, it helps and can be used to engage with your surrounds. Mindfulness helps greatly with engaging with your surroundings as it teaches you how to do it properly with all your senses, not what we tend to be doing.

I don't know about dreams, I've never read up much on them in order to understand how they can or whether they can have the same themes as intrusive thoughts. I tend to accept my intrusive thoughts when I had them along the same lines as dreams though because I have had many weird and violent dreams going back decades before my anxiety started. I never thought anything of them and they could often be explained by action films I had watched or something else. It just helped me to think of them in those terms because people don't worry about their dreams so why worry about these either? I know both are not me. As far as I know, dreaming is about the mind resolving thoughts to renew us and since these thoughts are on your mind so much, it's reasonable to assume that your mind found a need to resolve them during this process.

Not reacting with as much fear to an intrusive thought is very good. Do that often and it will keep building new neural pathways that are about not fearing them and they will end up going. Recovery is a rocky road though and you will likely have ones that are harder to deal with or catch you offguard. People think that because they are not as fearful, it's all an upward curve towards recovery. Anxiety doesn't work like that, expect bumps in the road, the blips. The important thing is to recognise that you are still far better than you were before and these blips are just part of the journey. So, this one that caught you offguard can be viewed in this way. It may not help with the anxiety it causes as this takes time to learn but you will get there if you keep working on your fears.

It takes time. You are in the process of rewiring the connections in your subconscious and this has to take time otherwise it would be dangerous to us. The brain will look for the repetitive patterns and start to incorporate them and mothball the old ones in the process.

Intrusive thoughts like "I hope X happens" are just that, intrusive thoughts. They come out of nowhere. I had these with my harm based ones about my parents. I even developed a sense of "liking" them for a while and I know other people on here who have had that too. Treat this the same, you don't really want it to happen.

Thinking about your thoughts cognitively is rumination. It's perfectly normal to do this but it's unhealthy for your anxiety because you are analysing the irrational thoughts in a negative way. It's very common and something all people do and you will have done before but not attached a label to it. Everytime we think about memories we are doing this but it's unhealthy when examining intrusive thoughts and anxiety unless we are doing it in a positive way for a positive reason e.g. as you may do in therapy.

Remember, someone who was a psycho wouldn't think "I hope X happens" and then feel bad about it or worry, they would love it. However, don't confuse that with my example of "liking" as even though that happens you still know it is wrong whereas a psycho believs it to be right.

ChocoOrange

06-10-15, 16:52

Thank you so much Terry! You're genuinely whats stopping me from having constant panic attacks and requesting to be sectioned haha. I feel bad for asking more questions, but has anyone ever experienced a brief moment where it felt like the TV was talking about them? Last night I had the TV on in the background and the weatherman said "And on Wednesday the intensity will drop" and I associated that to my intrusive thoughts. I know schizophrenic people have similar incidents to these and I was just wondering. I'm not too panicky over it but yeah. I didn't think the TV was talking to me or anything like that, was just kind of a strange association I made or something. Just out of curiosity, can you have intrusive thoughts that aren't in your voice? I had one before and I think (not 100%) that it wasn't in my voice. Should this be concerning to me or is this something that can happen with intrusive thoughts?
Thanks again!

E:. And I've been having paranoid thoughts (I generally dismiss them quickly). Is this just my anxious minds playing tricks on me because of my fear or schizophrenia or is this actually bad? That phrase thing really scared me as I tried googling about it and couldn't find much apart from one small-scale study.

MyNameIsTerry

07-10-15, 05:02

The TV instance could easily be Magical Thinking. I used to have this with my OCD as I had Magical Thinking mixed in. So, I would be reading credits or trying to read them a certain number of times before they disappeared to stop something bad happening. It would happen with things I heard whether verbal statements on a programme, a noise or even a specific programme being on at an expected time or if it was supposed to be on and wasn't.

When you have elements like this you can be prone to coincidence, superstition and even paranoia. These are common with anxiety and many people will have felt paranoia at some point. I know I've been through stages of it. They even treat paranoia with CBT, just like with anxiety.

I think you are just in a heightened state, on alert and looking of for triggers. This is common and it's what the fight or flight response is there to do. The more you feed this process, the more it remains engaged. Did you know that fight or flight sharpens the senses? Sounds become louder, lights brighter and you can even smell things that have no smell at all or now smell bad when they smelt ok before. The smell issues have been proven in studies, I've posted a thread about that.

In schizophrenia noises are audible, not internal thought based voices. Right now you are just second guessing yourself. It's very common to do this with obsessional disorders like OCD. I used to be checking, touching, re-reading and the list goes on & on, hundreds of times a day and all "just in case". You are searching for evidence of this but really you find no evidence and you say "phew". But you also keep questioning it and keeping it alive looking for possibilities it could be true. These all keep the obsession reinforced.

If you want to prove it to yourself, try a Behavioural Experiment. Here is a useful guide to OCD that explains how to do this:

http://self-help.tools/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/

Some useful threads on the OCD board about coincidence and paranoia:

http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=172957
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=173325
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=170554

ChocoOrange

07-10-15, 05:07

So do you think for the most part just randomly hearing a phrase is normalish? (as normal as I get). It really frightened me with how I was questioning people on if they did this. I guess a schizophrenic person wouldn't question people on if they made the noise but would instead just assume they made that noise and are denying it or something along those lines?

Thanks again, you're a genuine savior!

MyNameIsTerry

07-10-15, 05:26

Yes, that's it. Someone with schizophrenia wouldn't be questioning it like this, they would believe it. They would also hear it like anything else auditory. It would be clear to them.

We have all sorts of random thoughts but we don't question them. It's the anxiety sufferers that question the the normal things as can be seen on here all the time in various ways. For instance, can you imagine someone with HA having an intrusive thought where the word "cancer" pops up? How could they react to that? As you can see in one of the threads above I've just posted, that is a good example of how coincidence or just random thoughts or intrusive thoughts can lead to obsessive thinking and mental compulsions. The anxious person gets a thought which scares them and reacts in counterproductive thinking & behaviours that just reinforces the cycle and makes it worse.

If you had a thought pop into your head to buy milk when in the supermarket it would be neutral or positive as it is helpful. A thought about harming a loved one is clearly not either and not expected as a normal thought and you react negatively to it. The trick is learning to react with neutral or positive reactions. Accept a thought as a thought, but a common mistake is that the person then worries they area accepting the content. Why? Would you not accept the thought to buy milk without reading any deeper?

ChocoOrange

07-10-15, 05:31

Yeah one issue I had was because I would have heard it from a set of headphones I was wearing, I wasn't sure if I was hearing things as if they came from my headphones or inside my head if that makes sense? I basically struggled to differentiate the two because of how close my headset is to my head, I dunno if any of that will make sense. Hopefully it does.

That milk thing is actually a really good point. Thanks a lot for that little tidbit!

MyNameIsTerry

07-10-15, 05:47

If you can't differentiate the two then to consider it as hearing a noise means you are looking for evidence to prove your belief, Confirmation Bias. You can't prove it and you can't disprove it but you can choose to rationalise it and removing possible assumptions.

Way before I was ever anxious I can remember saying "what did you say" to get the response "I didn't say anything, you may be hearing things". My resulting thought was "that's weird, I could have swore I heard you say something". But then I would forget it straight away and move on. Anxiety causes us the question possible risks and problems to be sure. Remember those Cognitive Distortions I mentioned? They have the "all or nothing thinking" one that explains the need for black & white. The need for absolutes. We can't always have them so need to learn to accept this or it make us more anxious.

ChocoOrange

07-10-15, 05:58

Yeah honestly now you mention it i remember having similar things prior to anxiety. To be honest when i was calmed down a bit i felt a bit stupid nearly having a panic attack over hearing a phrase i literally hear 40 times a day. I dont know why i thought/heard it and i probably never will haha. It just felt weird that it was one seemingly random phrase from a game i play.

I take it confirmation bias is like, there can only be one "right" answer and in this case its i have to be going nuts or something. Its all starting to make more sense now if thats right. Maybe everyone sometimes has random phrases they hear often pop in their head but they dont second guess it or something.

Must be my 10th time saying thanks, but thanks again! Sorry for bad typing, on my phone

E: I've been incredible irritable recently and it's fueling my anxiety. I think that with how frustrated and irritated I am that I'm just going to snap or something. I'm almost constantly tensed up and feeling angry. Is it normal to like, imagine peoples conversations in my head? Like, imagining them talking about me? I honestly don't even know what constitutes the "voices" schizophrenic people hear.

MyNameIsTerry

08-10-15, 05:33

Confirmation Bias is where you naturally seek to prove the belief you already have. This one is a common with anxiety sufferers as we look for evidence that something bad will happen or has happened yet we forget all those times something didn't go badly. The fight of flight is built this way though, it's looking to secure us now, not worry so much about the odds it will happen. CB is also where we don't look for evidence to oppose the belief or dismiss evidence thhat could oppose it.

So, yes you could say that about it BUT also you have Cognitive Distortions in play too because you are making an automatic assumption about schizophrenia and ignoring all the other possibilities. This displays catastrophizing, minimising & maximising, generalising, and more. Thats why I think it's important to learn them because you start to spot them in other people, like on here as it gets quite easy, and then you start to see them in yourself which is when you can start to counter them.

One way to try to counter them is to use a Thought Record, a tool from CBT. There is a section for them on here:

http://psychology.tools/download-therapy-worksheets.html

One of those even includes working against the Cognitive Distortions. Beware of negative language though since some words are negatives e.g. using "should" implies a deadline and adds presume whereas "could" implies choice. To learn about this, read Davit's "Words" thread on the Panic board which explains loads about it. Use of positive or neutral wording in these exercises, and in general, all helps to maximise their potential and your recovery.

When you have one of these thoughts, get the Thought Record out and use it as a positive tool to neutralise them. It will ask you to fill in the thought, evidence for it, counter evidence and a final conclusion. I think these could help you to save on the checking & reassurance and work towards self reassurance instead.

No worries. Anyway, my typing can be awful on here!

People with schizophrenia here clearly audible voices like someone standing in front of you talking to you. Intrusive thoughts can be recognised when you pay more attention to them and you learn how they actually feel, but this takes practice from my experience in determining the difference between cognitive and intrusive as far as how they feel in your head itself but you know the difference from seeing them pop up in your mind whereas cognitive are from your thinking.

Conversations in the head are just an overactive mind from anxiety. Work on the anxiety and this reduces.

Being irritable, angry, snappy, tense, etc are all anxiety symptoms. Try relaxation techniques such as breathing techniques, guided visualisation, Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) for the tensing in the body and Mindfulness does relaxation as well as makes changes to the brain in a positive way (see my Mindfulness thread in my signature about that).

Imagining people talking about you can be anxiety, paranoia or both. This is common with anxiety disorders. You also have one that centres on a theme that looks towards the hidden messages in things so you are bound to have a worry like this. Self confidence always takes a knock too so we end up questioning things more.

ChocoOrange

09-10-15, 01:39

I keep thinking I can hear a banging from upstairs which is the new concern for me, I keep thinking it's my mum or something but there's almost no chance it is her as I'd know about it. My instant assumption was it's my mother, which has now made my assumption turn to it's me hearing things. As I said up there, a schizophrenic person would hear something and assume that someone did it. My own comforting methods have turned against me and now I think this is a surefire sign that I'm developing it/am schizophrenic. I'm having chronic panic attacks now thanks to this and a particularly troublesome intrusive thought I had earlier which has stuck with me almost all night.

MyNameIsTerry

09-10-15, 06:13

A schizophrenic person would believe they heard something as much as they would believe they heard someone standing in front of them talking to them. They don't have to assume that someone did something, that might be getting into specific forms of schizophrenia e.g. paranoid.

There are many odd noises that go on around us that we may never know what they were caused by. Houses creak, birds are flying in & out of some, metal twangs or bangs, etc.

I can remember watching TV one night in the living room and hearing a thud behind the fireplace. We have an electric fire mounted on the front of a sealed fireplace. I assumed it must have been some large collection of soot that dropped. Not long after this I started seeing large spiders running across their usual ratrun in front of the fire, something that happens at specific time of the year. So, a) I knew they must be hatching as this pattern has been taking place for years and b) they were large house spiders and an eggsack would be pretty big so falling could make a thud and c) the timing was all right.

If you were worried about schizophrenia, I would look towards the most likely signs such as the auditory hallucinations in voices whether from nowhere or objects like the TV. I would discount these many & varied noises around the house as they can be so many things and can easily be the product of an anxious state or paranoid state or both.

Scaredlady

15-10-15, 11:07

Hi ChocoOrange-

I am so glad that a very considerate and thoughtful user on here directed me to your thread, as you and I are experiencing the same thing.

Back in May I had been reading all evening one night in complete silence, no tv, no background noise, no distractions, just complete quietness. It got to about 1am and I decided to put my book down and sleep. As I was drifting off I was woken by a noise- I thought nothing more of it and went back to sleep.

The next morning though I woke to realise that I felt like a completely different person- I felt so at odds with myself. I was uber sensitive to noise- the washing machine, the kettle boiling, my dog barking, every noise I was acutely aware of and this high alertness was infact mentally painful.

I didn't know what was happening- I thought I must have become schizophrenic overnight because every time I heard a noise, ANY noise at all I was second guessing it and wondering 'Was that a voice?'

I couldn't stay in a shower, because the sound of the running water was like a million voices all battling to get out- I couldn't enjoy a walk out because normal noise was a battle field- car horns, overhead planes, people having conversations. That first day I had been out but had to return home when I heard a male voice say 'Hello, how are you?' I was petrified because I thought it was a voice talking to me... even though I could clearly see that it was the postman saying a simple hi to an elderly lady.

I can rationalise and put things into perspective BUT then my fear, anxiety and dread take hold and I let it convince me that I am schizophrenic/bi polar.

I have actually had days where I have craved a heart attack, thinking that I'd rather be physically ill than mentally unwell.

I am terrified of the idea of being schizophrenic or something similar and ending up in and out of mental health institutions the rest of my life.

I eventually plucked up the nerve in early July to go and see my GP- She told me that I am not displaying any signs of schizophrenia but I don't believe her, which is likely madness in itself. I even ended up at the A&E department one night because I was so frightened but the doctor there told me the same thing and still I don't believe it. My GP prescribed me Propranolol 40MG twice daily and Sertraline 50MG twice daily but I have been scared to take either because of my fear that medication could infact trigger the schizophrenia that doctors say I don't have but I think I do have/will get. It was only yesterday that I first gave Propranolol a try but in hindsight I don't think it will help with my problem.

It is mentally exhausting and draining- I am so tired from the whole thing. I was NEVER like this, I never behaved this way. Yes I always thought excessively, constantly over thinking but it never triggered anything like this.

I have good days though or parts of days that are good and I am absolutely fine but then I start dreading 'it' coming back and things go quickly down hill.

My bad days are very bad- On such days I can't tolerate the hair dryer, the vacuum cleaner, my breathing, the dog breathing- any noise is a worry because I tell myself it is a voice. I can no longer enjoy reading a book because then I think the silence around me is whispering and Oh dear I get in such a state.

So basically noise ANY noise is a problem for me, even the noise of silence is an issue.

I am convinced I have schizophrenia/bi polar on my bad days- or on my good days I am over wrought with worry that I will get these things but on those good days I can make sense of my thoughts and rationalise what I am thinking.

I found this site two nights ago- I was once again consumed with the notion that I could hear voices and battling what I now think is referred to as 'intrusive thoughts'; I was literally sat in my house at 2am telling myself that yes I was hearing voices but actually knowing that I wasn't. It's very hard to explain- my fear was saying yes but my rationality was saying no.

I am glad I have 'found' you and hope that doesn't sound creepy; I am so sorry that you're suffering but a little relieved to hear that someone else is experiencing similar thoughts to me.

SADnomore

16-10-15, 08:24

You know, this is exactly why all reputable studies are double-blinded (neither the testers themselves nor the subjects can know which subjects are actually exposed to the thing being tested)? Those who are not exposed, are called the "control" group. Almost invariably, some of these people will develop "symptoms" nonetheless. They know they are part of a study, and will be ready to notice something different - the placebo effect!

The beauty of it is that those behind the study will be able to factor out for these "effects", although they are always dutifully reported.

But what I find telling is that the bias present in even the participating scientists, trained against having biases, is still so strong that it is thought best to blind them to which subject is getting the real deal and which not, so it doesn't work its way into the findings.

Stop experimenting already! It's not a valid test you're conducting. Boooo! Tear it up!

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Sorry, this was meant to go in right under Terry's, to underline his points about the bias factor.
I can also see why the giving in to the OCD compulsion/thoughts needs to be nipped in the bud! With the very next one. - "Invalid - Out!!" One has to start somewhere, and there is no reason not to begin immediately ;)

Holds1325

16-10-15, 23:28

That sounds alot like Misophonia Scaredlady,

Its very common and easy to get over. I used to have this with utensils scratching on plates at meal times, drove me nuts.

However when I would get panic attacks, every single sound became so magnified that it terrified me, it comes along with derealization.

How I got over it was just ignoring the sounds, I didn't care that they were loud and in the end my mind stopped focusing on them.

Remember schizophrenic people don't know they're going nuts to begin with and carry on as normal, most with no fear.

ChocoOrange

17-10-15, 00:38

@Scaredlady

Yeah it's definitely exhausting alright. I was getting up to make sure that sound I heard was actually a car, or going in the living room to make sure that voice I can hear is just the television. I was also always asking people "Did you say X or Y just then?" always looking for reassurance.

I spoke to three professionals over these issues I was having, and my general fear. All said the same thing: If you think it's happening, it probably isn't. Another thing is something another user told me on here (not sure how much he likes his name being mentioned), GP's and especially people at A&E need to be able to spot the signs of things like this as there is obvious risks attached if they failed to spot it.

When I'm not in panic and thinking rationally, I can almost laugh at my fear. The thing is, 2+2=1 to me when I think about things around schizophrenia and my mental health in general for that matter. What I mean by that is, everything I thought pretty much only had one answer to me: I'm developing something worse. There was no mid-ground, no rationale. A few weeks ago, for example, there was some really repetitive and loud banging going on outside my house just down the road, all I could think was: This is it, no one else can hear that surely (no one was even wake to!). I look out my window after spending ten minutes freaking out over the noises, and it was just some morons down the road drunk.

I'm pretty sure this is called "confirmation bias", the definition if you google it is: 'is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.' That pretty much summed it all up for me and really helped me learn to ignore all these noises I was questioning 24/7.

I've honestly never replied trying to give advice on here, so hopefully this wasn't too painful to read and hopefully I helped you even a little bit.