Could I have schizophrenia?

*This might get longer than I intended i just don't know how many tangents im going to vere off into so bare with me, thanks.*
Hey everyone,
It seems odd to ask someone if they think you have a mental illness, just because it seems like if you truly have the illness, then you would believe everything you experience to be normal. I've always believed that, until I got interested in schizophrenia, researched a little just to see exactly the underlying causes and symptoms of it, just out of curiosity sake, only to find that I've experienced some of those things before. Sure, everybody gets a case of webmd hypochondria at one point or another, but then I realized exactly what my life has narrowed to, and now I consciously believe that something isnt right. I'll give a brief of my life

I was born into a fairly level headed middle class family, no body who has had schizophrenia. My mom though had pretty severe depression and anxiety until I was about 5 due to really tumultuous relationships with family and friends, and I know she took it out on meand my dad did too, i got the soap treatment, the hand whippings and the belt lashings and way more threats, which i would never do, I think its completely sick to physically harm someone you love, or anyone for that matter. I see it as sadism. Never really liked my father, he's still alive, and still "happily" married to my mom. but I really do love my mother, she supports me with everything and shes better and a happier individual.
Anyways, looking back on it, I was a very compliant kid, very shy and quiet at school, though I had many friends and was well liked or so i believe. I always did everything my dad taught me to. idk why even if i didn't really believe in it, something about him was really intimidating.

Well, I was always his pride since i was basically his mirror image, and as he loved baseball, I always played and somehow made the freshman team though i think he payed the coach to let me play. well i worked out with the team thru the fall and then got sick with pneumonia and missed like a week of baseball in early spring. Well, I decided that was the greatest week ever. Like I could be alone with my own thoughts and I felt sort of free, i still remember that feeling. Once the pneumonia got better, I just said I still felt bad so I wouldnt have to play, pretty genius move, and even better I went to the doctor and found out I had mono, which gave me another 2 weeks. well, 3 weeks I was totally fine and normal, but there was no way in hell I was going back. I was too weak, and small to begin with, so kept playing it off, but of course for that 3 months I played it off, I couldn't do anything else since I was so frightened of going back to the team, so I had a period of depression that really did incapacitate me until that summer

I grew really socially anxious because of that, I just felt so great being alone. Well, I was with my mom and she very randomly told me I should listen to the band The Doors, i still remember it she told me that Jim Morrison was a really unique individual and that I would like him and I should read his biography, alot of suggestions in a short amount of time, well I did, and 2 months later I had every album, had read 3 of his biographies and $#%^ the doors were my life, I thought they were prophets and I spread them to my friends sophomore and junior year of high school. In fact people called me jimmy jr I liked them that much. Plus, I look like him. So at one point it dawned on me that I was him. My mom told me about them because that would make me feel free, which it did. She also told me about Kurt cobain and hunter thompson, who also gave me this feeling of being free. So I shaped my personality around them, I did things they did, played their pranks, I called them the big 3 because I thought they were 3 people who really defined me.

I would walk around high school and say things I've read that Jim used to say and even speak like him still. I always saw myself as jim's high school portrait. For instance, if I stared at something, I would see myself as having jims face unless I was looking in the mirror obviously. I spent alot of time looking in the mirror cuz it always tripped me out, and i'd try to make my hair look like his for comfort when I'm in pics and looking in the mirror. Honestly, I still do this, it's not quite as often though. Usually when I'm high or drunk, I see myself as who I am.

Well, the last three year (sophomore in college now) I really tanked socially. Like i've lost all the friends i've had, and haven't had a solid friend group since mid high school, and I really can't make friendships and relationships like I used to which led me to realize I don't belong here. I don't know where I'm from but it's not here, everybody else I see walking around seems to have things figured out, how to make friends and how to be themselves and how to have true interests in things, which I haven't, I loved english because jim loved it, and I told everybody about the beatniks but now I have totally no interest in them anymore, like I talked to a friend I had in hs the other day, and we had nothing to say. He's doing really well, and he was talking about all the books we used to talk about, but I couldn't remember any of it. Like couldn't even act like Jack kerouac was my hero. He was my ######6 hero in high school, but I think it all got too tiring

Now it's hard to keep up this self, because I feel like deep down inside I really don't have any true interests, I just like to sit and revel in my thoughts, everyone else seems to have an interests that truly aligns with their inner and outer self, but I can only act like I have interests. And sometimes I can really convince myself I like them, the doors and beatnik poetry for example. I know guitar to but now i can only play if im high, i just sound stupid sober and can't do it.

If you've made it far enough into the memoir where I actually talk about my concerns, thank you so much. I started hearing faint voices while I laid in bed last winter. It happened every night, usually it was multiple voices, one a girl, alot of times I would hear a baseball broadcaster calling random games along with spitting out advertisements like on real tv baseball broadcasts. I've also heard what I think is my mom calling her mother crying and telling her she loves her. That one freaked me out.

I have had a lifetong trouble of sleeping, staying up nights at a time, like 5 nights in a row with maybe an hour of sleep. this winter it got the opposite, i was sleeping like 16 hours a day because I was ######6 exhausted all the time and like other times in life, I had a very random crying spell while at my parents house. and decided I wasn't able to go back to college. I was also really interested in writing, i loved it it was my passion, but I just couldn't do it anymore and I knew I couldn't work for my school's paper like I had been asked to. It took crazy effort just to write a decent page, thhatys why this is all like vomit. so I started seeing a psychiatrist and working a retail job like i had been. Didn't tell her everything, but enough for her to call me depressed, so I went on prozac, and was like yeah sure it's working, but it was just some placebo, so come april, I can remember having this episode where everything seemed weird, colors were a little brighter, i was inside my department store, everything looked surreal, my coworkers didn't seem like real people, and on top of that people were trying to buy $#%^ from my department and I couldn't just lose my cool. But I had a really difficult time understanding everybody, it was like i heard their words but they were slightly out of order and I had to think really hard to hear people. Ive had stuff like this often, but this really took the trophy.

I made it thru the night and went back to my parents home cuz i didn't wanna go home cuz of a party at my house and I ended up crying like crazy and talking a thousand miles an hour taking off my clothes cuz i was hot pacing around outside in my boxers, i remember all of it, but it fell very right to do it at the time, and sure enough my parents said they were driving me to the looney bin so i went their, lied about most of the $#%^, again just said I was depressed, but stayed a week.

Ok, I wish i ordered this stuff better, i just have really #######5 organization and if I stop thinking about something the thought wont come back lol. a patient there talked to his roomate, a schizophrenic who only talked one on one to talk about his perceptions of people, and he saw one guy as a preacher, one as a drunk, another as a clown, but he saw me as his friend ignoring him. I was just quiet because i am and I was reading an easy stephen king most of the time or casually talking pseudo #######4 with the intellectuals there, but I didn't talk to him, just cuz I figured he was going thru some tough times and I thought he wanted to be alone. But he said I seemed normal but he also thought the other schizophrenic guy was normal too. Now this other schizophrenic guy was somewhat social and held himself up well, though I could tell he was schizophrenic. But I was sort of disturbed by the fact he thought I looked like him, and furthermore I told the clown to stop messing with the schizophrenic, and the schizophrenic decided I was a prophet for saving the clown from his gloomy fate. I didn't really understand it, but we really got along. Do you find other schizophrenics to seem normal?

Ok, back to my life, I get out of the hospital feeling happy, my fake self. Ok so I've decided with me I have a fake self and a real self. My real self just loves to be alone in sulk in thought its just really comfortable to me. But to be a part of society I really have to have this fake self. My fake self felt great, I was happy started working out, I honestly felt good, but I realized Everything I wanted to do satisfied me just as much if I fantasized it as if it actually happened. And it's that way with everything I can just dream things and they feel so real and I'm legitimately happy. By the way I'm pretty much asexual, I like women, I just don't care about sex.

But, for the voices I hear at night, doc perscribed seroquil, which actually stops them. Until I stop taking the med cuz I didn't take them for a weekend and things got weird. I heard the voices again, only a little louder and easier to understand and the next day, I had already planned to smoke weed with a girl friend of mine who I've only known for a couple of months. I really really really wanted to do it another day, but I was scared if I did she wouldnt want to see me anymore, and I wanted to see her to see if I could establish a relationship again, because I had gotten so bad at it. Didn't necessarily want it, I just wanted it to show other people I could do it and to stop thinking im a closet gay. Well we smoked, and some fear really crept in and crept in fast, and I found myself having nothing to say to her because I just wanted to sit their and zone out staring into space, So I just had to tell her I felt sick and I was going to bed, so she left very awkwardly and I know I ###$ it up with her, but it was best she left then and not when things got really bad

Well, I sat out in my back yard watching my neighbors cut a tree. I found that by focusing all my thoughts on that, it would relieve me from the crazy thoughts running through my head (I'm an alien on a mission to warn humans about their destruction of earth, I am an advancement of the human species, my weed dealer set me up for this because he wants that girl, squirrels are really intelligent beings spying on us, possibly laughing. I noticed how the sky looked like a sea, and all the trees algae, Everything I thought felt so true, it was liberating, but I was tired of them. I wanted to go back to sober self. So i focused on this tree, and as soon as it was coming down, someone didn't get out of the way, and I vaguely saw them get crushed and I heard the screams and everybody panicking. I even saw the neighbors all come to their fence to listen to her moaning voice. I legit heard someone crying and saw everybody panicing but I just watched, because I wasn't 100% on it. I even started to smell what smelled like rotten flesh. I couldn't actually see anyone because of the massivity of the tree, but It was goddamn convincing that someone was under their from the way they were maniacly chainsawing the tree limbs, but no ambulance came. An hour had passed, everything made me think someone died, except their wasn't an ambulance, and once the final bits of the tree were chopped and picked up, their was no body.

What the ###$ was I seeing, I had never had a visual hallucination that convincing before, I've seen stuff in dreams like that, I've seen shadows look like people and been frightened by fleeting little hallucinations but nothing like that. Sometimes when I close my eyes before I'm asleep I'll jump because I'll lucidly see a net capture more or this one time I saw myself petting a cat while I was still totally conscious, but in the darkness of my closed eyes the cat hissed and transformed into a human skeleton with bleeding eyes and flashing and it scared me so bad I couldn't go back to sleep. but nothing has consciously convincing as that.

Lately I find that the only thing that really comforts me is mediation where I can allow my thoughts to flow through me and I can feel myself rising. I'm really good at lucid dreaming, I've found away to basically do it anytime as long as it's during the day and I'm not tired. Actually I can even do this sensation that isn't at all physical. It makes my nerves tingle, it feels like a surge of electric energy running through my legs in my upper torso. I can do it on command but I've never met anybody else that can do it, and it makes me feel really good, because I feel like its very unique

I find myself to be extremely observant and actually overly perceptive of things, for instance I always know when people are talking about me even if there arent any outward signs and when people are laughing I can tell when it's about me. Alot of times theylre do it without really being direct like I can be in a room of people and they will say something so random but I know who they're talking about and I'll tell them I get it and they'll act like they dont know, but its hilarious because they're so astonished that I would know

It's funny though because now that I've written an autobiography, I'm not as curious as i was before, but hey if anybody has the time to read this, please leave thoughts

Oh, I do have a few more questions, if any could give personal expierences on it. I'm majoring in psych right now just because It's probably the only thing that will keep me interested enough to get a degree. But I was wondering exactly what thought blocking is. Can you guys give me examples of times you have experienced thought blocking? I have had so many experiences especially in the last year where I'll have thoughts that run through my head light years faster than my mouth can catch up. So I'll end up starting a very intelligent thought I've pondered and after a couple sentences, I'll just toally burn out, and all the brilliant things I had thought and totally planned on saying just vanish in the wind, and I have to come up with something stupid just so people don't judge me. Is that thought blocking?

And like I posed before, Do schizophrenics see other schizophrenics are average and normal?

I was also thinking, couldn't schizophrenia support the idea of infinite timelines. Like maybe the voices that a schizophrenic hears and things he sees are in the same position of the same planet in another timeline? Very random thought, all atoms are 99.9999 percent empty space. if all the time lines overlapped each other would that make the atoms larger? atoms being 99.99999 percent empty space would make infinite universes make sense. I know this isn't a physics forum, but any thought on that would be cool.

Alright, heres the summary
-hallucinated that man died by way of falling tree, heard, saw, smelled aftermath
-hear voices at night, baseball commentator, a random woman, and my mother talking to her mom
-I really withdrew myself socially after highschool
-i have alot of random thoughts, absrtact thoughts i can't really piece together in words or anything that makes sense to other people, so i think about those and cant ever remember where my cigarettes or my keys or wallet is and its extremely frustrating
-very random crying spurts, usually when I go home. I won't be sad, honestly ill just be very quiet and filled with thoughts and then I cry and spill my guts out with everything bothering me, ######6 weird.
-lifelong trouble sleeping
-just don't feel like i can fit into society, like I feel like being a loner and reveling in your own thoughts is so stigmatized and I try to be a real social human and make lots of friends but I see pictures of all my old friends with their new friends and it made me cry one time, because I know i'm never going to have that, and I see couples walking and I know ill never experience that, but i'd feel so free if I could just focus on myself, taking care of myself and revealing everything i learn when i just think, because sometimes i feel like if other people just took my theories seriously they would understand. honestly i just havent written in a long time like i used to and it needed to be done, doesn't look nearly as good as before, but i used to not have to edit it before this is a trainwreck ill admit, but if yu tae the time to read it its not hard to understand and I'm just curious about schizophrenia. I find it so interesting, its like the one interest i truly have, the fact that it keeps me in school is saying something

Hi there,
It does seem like you've had some scary and/or interesting experiences. I would encourage you to seek out professional assistance for seeking out a diagnosis, or potential diagnosis as no one here on this forum is qualified to do so. Please see the thread located here: schizophrenia/topic129501.html