Question: A Day In The Life Of A Schizophrenic?

Hi everyone,

Schizophrenia is a mental condition that has always, for lack of a better word, "intrigued" me.

What is a day in the life of a schizophrenic like? What do you experience? What are the positives (if there are any)? What are the negatives? How did you come to realize that you had this condition?

I hope I don't offend anyone; I'm genuinely interested in gaining knowledge on this subject.

With love & compassion,
Jane

For myself, schizophrenia keeps me very introverted and I tend to create a world in my mind of the world around me. I am never quite sute how accurate or clear my comparative world is to that of the real world; but my mind does this almost involuntarily or without pre-meditation. I live in my head but can also communicate with others and have a fairly firm grasp of reality -- wheter it being in occupational surroundings or the generak public. I don't really suffer hallucinatory effects but am unable to function with normal or standard emotions such that of a non-schizophrenic person. I usually prefer not to engage with people as I can be inadvertenly inappropriate thus awkward.

As soon as I wake up, I check my tablet. Texts get first priority, followed by emails. I don't ever call back anyone who calls me on my phone because I can't be sure who it is unless I have their number saved, in which case I text them back rather than call (I'm hard of hearing and need a physical copy of the conversation so I don't forget what's going on).
I get out of bed and use the bathroom, then grab a soda (MUST have caffeine). I get on YouTube and see if there's anything interesting to watch (documentaries and scientific stuff).
Then I basically repeat that over and over and over all day, while taking care of my son (after his dad's gone to work). I do regular housework like dishes and picking up pop cans and all that stuff.
I only leave the apartment when I really need to, like to get groceries or go to my son's appointments. This leads me to only leave the apartment once every week and a half or so.
I'm very strict on who can contact me, when, and for what reason. If someone contacts me and I'm not comfortable talking to them at the time, I ignore them until I feel like it. If I'm not sure who they are, I completely ignore them unless I receive a text or email telling me who they are and what they want. I mostly stay in the bedroom when we have visitors, because I can't control who comes over, but I can avoid them if I want.
I shower up to 3 times a day (that's only if I've gotten really sweaty or dirty or something), usually twice. The first shower is to clean up and the second one is to relax and get some further privacy.
If I hallucinate, it's in the form of hearing doors slam, people screaming my name at me, small dogs or cats running in front of my feet, and other odd things. My voices and hallucinations don't tell me to hurt anyone or insult me or anything. They're basically useless, just scream my name at me repeatedly.
I'm VERY needy for physical affection and pretty constant verbal acknowledgement, so I get hugged and referred to frequently by my fiance. I'm very childlike (around 7 or so) so I'm not very socially able and I usually shut down or entirely ignore any attempt to socialize with me. I don't really care what people have to say or how they feel about much of anything. If I care, I'll go out of my way to find out.
How I found out: I was 4 months pregnant and the father left me, refusing to admit that the baby was his. I started hallucinating, got SEVERELY depressed, became confused, my temper got out of control, I became paranoid, etc. I finally went to a psychiatrist and was told that he knew what was wrong but I couldn't have any meds because I was pregnant. He also didn't tell me what my diagnosis was (I found out about a year later).

Have you read “The Center Cannot Hold‚" by Elyn Saks? Great book. Anyways, in my typical day or morning or evening I tend to read a lot about anything I can. I can tell you that some days are good and others bad like today. I've been dealing with the insect crawling sensation all over me while this morning I heard screaming to the point of jerking me awake and wondering what's going on. Hmm! I have trouble communicating to say the grocery store clerk when commenting (I'm usually able to give a yes or no answer quite well) on something as simple as the weather. I find verbal communication a chore in general, but when I type or write, everything comes out relatively well as I can take my time. Some days I feel utterly alone in the world but I do have a good support system between my Gramma and mom.

Dear Jane,

The term "a schizophrenic" is not really politically correct, and I think you would have preferred to say "someone who has schizophrenia." It's a minor point, but I mention it for future reference.

I have schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, which is a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder type 1 with psychotic features. Presumably your question relates to just the schizophrenia symptoms so I will describe a typical day with these (before I received medication) during a period when my mood symptoms were neither depressive nor manic. This would be similar to someone who just had schizophrenia.

I can only describe the symptoms as absolute chaos. The mind abandons all rules and one loses all sense of reality - even of self. One sees oneself as a stranger - perhaps even as non-human. Hours can flash by in seconds - and equally seconds can seem like hours.

There is paranoia - a constant belief that friends are really enemies secretly harboring inner resentment towards one.

There are voices which speak rapidly and will not stop. There are visions and distorted shapes. And there are strong unshakable delusions which dominate ones thinking.

And there is the ever-present suspicion that all is not well within ones mind.

As bizarre as these symptoms are, it is possible to hide them from others by pretending to be merely eccentric.

And the typical day? Outwardly not too different from other people, but inwardly feeling like a being from another universe.

I have been diagnosed with Schizophrenia, Bi-polar and ADD. I feel I have Schizoaffective Disorder.

Before I was put on medication, every conversation that went on at work and at home without me (but within ear shot just enough to hear voices speaking but not make out what they were saying) I thought was about me which added to my anxiety.

Constantly suspicious of people's motives.

Constantly questioning people's motives.

Paranoid that I will end up homeless somehow.

I get paranoid about buildings collapsing, especially balconies and any area of a building that juts out with no visible support directly underneath it. But with my medication, that has eased up though it hasn't gone away.

I imagine a rain spider on my door every single time I go home (I’m scared of spiders) which stems from my brother once finding a rain spider on the door when he used to live at home. I scan the door for this spider quickly, before taking hold of the handle and opening it.

Voices have only recently started up for me, so I need to go back to my psychiatrist to maybe increase my medication (I am on Abilify) - Last night while lying in bed, I heard a tap dripping. I was just about to get out of bed and go see where it was coming from when it suddenly stopped as soon as it started.

I heard a soft voice yesterday at work while in the kitchen. The voice was pretty and it was humming quietly. I rushed to check the passage way to see who was around, but no one was there...

Sometimes when I go to the bathroom at work, I can hear the work phone ringing, but when I come out it isn't ringing. I'm aware there may be a camera in the bathroom at work that monitors me (my delusion)

I get super stressed on long journeys (driving)
I imagine us getting into a car accident, and the more I see the accident happening in my mind the more it stresses me out. I have this fear that if I actually imagine it happening, it WILL happen, like a jinx, so when I do imagine it I get even more freaked out and try to change my thoughts to something else.

That's it for now.

My typical day:
Get up around 11am. I only get up at that time because there was screaming in my head, or I had a nightmare and thought it was real. I take my medications right after getting out of bed. I don't eat breakfast because the bowls keep shouting at me. I feed the animals (we have two cats and a dog). I have to tell the refrigerator that we had a deal not to call each other names, but it never keeps its word. If there's something I have to do that day (I'm the only one in the house that drives) then I get ready for that. Normally there's errands, maybe an appointment, and the normal going-around things. A lot of times I hear voices and random noises in stores, but I rarely see things that aren't there. I've seen children turn into weird creatures, and one time while turning into the automotive section at WalMart I saw my dead grandmother turn into a dead alien and start shaking violently. When these things happen, I have to go to my car and wait for everyone else (I have a wife and a 13-year-old daughter).

When we get back from those (or if I don't have to do them on that day) I take medications again. I watch YouTube for maybe half a hour (or more), then decide to go for a walk because it doesn't help me to stay in the house all day. My walks are normally uneventful, and the voices are easier to drown out since I got an MP3 player. It's about a two-mile round-trip walk, where I go to the local grocery store and buy some snacks and anything we might need for supper that night. I have to circle around the blocks a few times because a weird little creature is following me: it looks like a pencil and it calls me the N word (I'm not black). Then I get home and do a random chore (cut the grass, do the dishes, etc.) just to feel useful. I typically have about an hour or two before supper, so I watch videos on-line and do some laundry. At supper, I take more pills.

From the end of supper until bedtime, I try not to do much. I need a new knee (IRL) so I try to take it easy. I'm usually watching videos more or finding new ways of sorting my stuff. An hour into this, I feel that I'm ignoring my family so I see what they're up to. During all of this (the chores, the supper, the walk, etc.) I'm hearing voices. None of them are nice. A few times, I've had to yell over them to make sure my wife could hear me, or I'll tell them to shut up and she'll wonder who I'm talking to.
We'll go over to the neighbor's for about an hour just to talk, then I'll have to leave because my thoughts are being broadcast from a plane that just flew overhead.

When I get home, I feed the animals and get a shower. Sometimes the showerhead insults me the whole time I'm in there, and sometimes it doesn't. I lay down on the bed and watch more videos. Maybe I'll have a snack. It's not time for my night meds yet. I remember that if I don't switch the clothes from the washer to the dryer, the world will end and it will be my fault. The walls breathe. The cat talks to me (all the time) but he'll change accents. Most of the time he has no accent, but he'll adopt a French, British, Australian, Canadian, etc. accent and keep it for the rest of the day. We talk about random things until he walks away in real life. He always tells me: "See ya later, prick!".

I take my night time medications. I have insomnia, so I take melatonin and trazodone. If I take them around 10 or 11pm, I can fall asleep around 2 or 3am. From the time I take medications until I fall asleep, I like talking to me wife. We spend almost the whole day together, so sometimes we don't have a lot to say and we watch a movie. I get a few recurring delusions, and about this time one comes up. People are watching me, the artificial sweetener companies have a monitor in me, people can hear my thoughts, the NSA is always making sure I'm being good, my grandfather isn't really dead and took the form of the nice neighbor lady down the street, the next-door neighbor's dog is talking to me about eating a kid's baseball, my fingers fall off, and so on.

I fall asleep and start it over the next day...

Today -

I opened a new incense stick (I love incense) from an unmarked see-through packet - I think it's the one that came with my incense burner. Anyway, it smelt like smoke and nothing more then that, no distinguishable scent so I started imagining the person who gave it to me laced it with weed or some hallucinogenic drug and I started hallucinating (this is the scene I am imagining) and I stumbled over to my parents and told them someone laced my incense and they called my psychiatrist. I went to see her and she didn't believe me and instead, institutionalized me.

*shudders*

I still have the incense burning in spite of my imagination, wondering if that is what is going to happen..

I'm about to leave to visit my mother's brother, he lives in an old age home with his wife. I never visit because of my aversions to old age homes, but this time my mom insisted so I have no choice.

Old age homes freak me the ###k out. I found a way to cope with going for this visit:

I wrote on a piece of paper:

"I can't be effected by old people" and
"Old people can't effect me" and I put the piece of paper in my pocket to help me cope with the visit. I just feel death at old age homes, it makes me both sad and depressed. I can also SMELL the old, they smell like death and it freaks me out so badly. I don't like how they smell.

Lately I've been seeing shadows out the corners of my eyes. Or I see my cat, but he isn't actually there when I turn my head to look. This is a new development and surely this shouldn't be happening on my medication? Sigh.

lost_horizon wrote:...And the typical day? Outwardly not too different from other people, but inwardly feeling like a being from another universe.

This is my experience too. Like right now? My roommates have no idea what's wrong with me. That I'm just holed up in my room unable to function because I believe that the government is trying to kill my right now with their thought-transmission machines that I learned about from reading lots of books that sent me messages from the Russians trying to warn me about my government who wants to assassinate me by convincing me to commit suicide. I probably should go to the hospital right now, but I have a job interview on Wednesday so I have to just wade this out and hope it goes away. Otherwise, I get up, I eat, I $#%^, I pee, I cry, I laugh, I do puzzles, I take showers... I'm not as functional with everyday things as I would like to be, but I play habitica (formerly known as habitrpg) to help me with my daily activities.