Schizophrenia.

[Peppapig1]

Hello I'm really glad I found this community I also use the sane australia forum. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the beginning of last year I'd like to know there's others like me out there and I'm hoping my experiences are the same as others with a diagnoses of schizophrenia. I don't use drugs or drink alcohol anymore I'm 3 years sober and 6 years drug free. I believe there's invisible people here following me, plotting against me, putting alcohol and drugs into my food and fluids, pushing me into the wall, tripping me over, taking advantage of me while I sleep. The invisible people are the people I use to hang out with or stalked on social media. When I really think about it sometimes how are they invisible, wouldn't they have hurt me to the point I'd be in hospital with injuries. I googled invisible invention and it said Canada military has made an invisible wall so now my brain has come up with there in an invisible suit. The medication isn't taking it away and even when I tell myself noones here it's just you here my brain still believes there here and it's effecting my relationship with my kids and friends because I also think there controlling what I say and what I do like they have control over my brain I also think they control what I think and they know exactly what I'm thinking about too.

[therising]

Hi Peppapig1

My heart goes out to you as you face so many challenges that can be involved with such a unique and sometimes tormenting form of perception.

While I can't fully relate to what you face, I can partly relate to some degree. As a 53yo gal, I'm going back a bit when I recall very abruptly coming out of long term depression when I was 35. It happened in a split second, based on a literally mind altering revelation. While life took on a whole different perspective, it was a perspective that began as amazing yet turned into something altogether different. I began to imagine what became my new reality. Completely believable 'voices' became the challenging norm and there was a 100% vividness and realness to many of the things that came to mind. It eventually became a world of torment which no one I knew could relate to. While I consider myself lucky when I say this went on for a couple of months, I am lucky compared to those who face such challenges well beyond such a short period of time. 

Over the years I have been fascinated by how the mind works (aka 'the brain in action'). Whether it's involved researching this period of time I speak of, the ins and outs of depression that I've faced and still face, the way perception, imagination, beliefs, inner dialogue and more work, they all fascinate me. Whether I'm researching in general or researching in my quest to better understand myself, it's proved to be quite the rabbit hole. One of the many surprising thing I came across, by the way, was the 'Hearing Voices Network'. I never knew such a support network existed until I stumbled across it online a few years back.

I have so many unanswered questions which relate to what triggers/alters our mind, what opens it, how to manage our mind when it's open or fully open, how our imagination really works in relation to reality and an open mind and so much more. In hindsight, I can say one of the many things I learned after coming out of that mind altering period when I was younger involved a need to ground or close my mind out of where it was at times. So much easier said than done, for sure, especially when inner dialogue sounds like 'But what if what you imagine is actually real but no one else knows it other than you. You need to research that, to find proof that it's real'. Research leading to confirmation of what we imagine can be a dangerous rabbit hole. A fully open mind will absorb and interpret all possibilities.