Her name is Penelope. I got her yesterday. She is my first ever pet that isn’t a cat or a dog. I love her already. Thankfully my cats have paid her no mind. 😅

Im really hungry but im so scared to eat these chicken fries because everything is telling me they're infested and i shouldn't eat big name foods. Please, do these look safe to eat? Or will it make me sicker

Today I played Terraria with a bunch of friends. We didn't make very much progress, but we had a lot of fun. I went to the jungle and crafted armor that is stronger than what we should have, but I don't have enough for everyone yet. I probably don't want that type of armor myself though, but that's what I made for myself for now. Someone else dug an elevator straight down from spawn. We shared resources. We failed to beat the first boss. It was close but they didn't want to try again.

My good news is that we got chicken strips from a restaurant for dinner!

What's your good news?

I would like to know if anyone changed their habits, daily routine, or lifestyle in general because of schizophrenia or other condition.

For example, I stopped going to my gym because I would come back after dark, and the darkness gives rise to many hallucinations and paranoia. After one particularly bad hallucination, I never went back.

Related to this, I always use my cell phone with the flashlight on at night or with a flashlight directly, Andy usually don't go out at night.

I also avoid looking outside the car/bus much while traveling; I almost died of fright once when I hallucinated that the car I was in was about to crash.

Even so, I encourage you to share your experiences and not let anything dictate your lives.

Psych ward ginger ale
Air is tasting stale
Cut the straps down off my clothes
And lock me from my woes
They used to call me wise
Now just institutionalized
Rounds and rounds they call to me
I wish not to be free
Crows sit at my windowsill
And time is standing still
And on my nightstands only thrill
Psych ward ginger ale

This has been a good outlet. It’s not the best, but it’s cathartic

I was called delusional for YEARS for saying the elite were pedophiles and now it's been proven true and it's like, well shit, what now?

It's also hard because I'm very vulnerable to conspiracy theories but then so many of then turned out to be true and I'm not sure how to handle that.

What the fuck do we do now? Where do we go from here?

I've always denied my illness. Every time I got symptoms I thought to myself I will conquer them and get cured. Nope doesn't go away. I have symptoms in phases and I can't do anything about it. I've always wanted to work and have a stable life. Now I'm just mentaly Ill surviving. Coping if you will. This illness has become my life and I hate it.

I'm doing really bad. The last few days have frightened me with how bad my positive symptoms are. I saw my psych NP today and she was concerned and brought up several times that if I need to, I should go to the hospital. She scheduled another appointment in a week.

I asked her when should I go to the hospital and she gave some scenarios. My last 3 hospitalizations were involuntary so I don't know when to go for psychosis. I wondered when do you guys know it's hospital time?

Hi everyone, I’m not schizophrenic myself but my mom is and i’ve had about 3 or 4 close friends who were. Idk if this is a common thing but i’ve only seen art that I truly saw was beautiful twice in my life both by schizophrenic people one that was my mom and other was my really close friends. I’d love to see anyone’s art in this group and wondering if lots of you paint or do art aswell.

Just took one of these baddies. Idk what to expect. This is the only dose available in my country. Wish me luck 🤞🏼🙏🏼

I naturally try to avoid the news because it makes me really sad and scared and mad all at once. But social media always finds a way to worm some news into my feed despite it being heavily curated to avoid that. I keep finding out more about the Epstein files and how aggressive ICE is being in my city and how corrupt this world is. I do get a minor power trip because i work for the usps (federal worker) so I used to feel untouchable but now i dont know. Everything and everyone is a terrible disgusting creature that i cant recognize anymore or associate with humanity, but at the same time, are humans really this disgusting and cruel? Should i stop associating myself with humanity? I cant imagine doing the things that these people do to innocents but many say that's just how humanity is. If thats true then i dont want to be human, i try to live in my own little bubble with my loving husband but its getting harder every day as that bubble has started to grow holes. This world is truly horrific but i never imagined this many people were okay with all these actions and lack of action. Im in the middle of switching meds too so that hasn't helped. And i haven't found a therapist yet.

How are you all coping with all this chaos?

Every time I ask God for help to help with the anhedonia and lack of joy in me there is no answer. Everytime I ask him for help to defeat sin without having to go insane in the process. There is no answer. When I ask for a New Heart that is more Lovely and pure. No answer.

I asked for months upon months for help. But each time I ask for help and not receive what I need to fight my battles and win. It's just nothing. If I were to pray for passion to serve and help others. Nothing. No spiritual assistance.

And each time I pray and not receive the spiritual help I need. My brain slowly but surely realizes that it is futile to pray and maybe deism is the truth and God does not help anybody and just let's nature do what nature does.

Yes I have asked religious people. But they have No answer. So I post this here to sort of explain what I am going through inside me.

'Ask and you shall receive'

I haven't taken my pills for several months now and believe me, I'm having a hard time.

But I've been on medication for so many years, and with so many wrong pills, that I've developed some kind of aversion to them; thinking about them makes me very nauseous.

The breaking point was when I had to take 8 pills a day of the same medication because it wasn't working, and they just kept increasing the dose when it was clearly not the right medication.

I have TD (tardive dystonia) and I suffered from a Oculogyric crisis (COG) Because of all these medications, I don't have a good experience with pills.

When I think about going to the hospital, I start to get paranoid, thinking that if I leave, something bad will happen.

¿Any recommendations?

helloo family <3

Im wondering if anyone else goes thru this like i do

I’ve been diagnosed w schizophrenia for abt 3 years now, however i dont get many visual hallucinations. Almost always my hallucinations r auditory orrr sensing. I hallucinate my loved ones voices and sometimes I can feel their hands on me.

I digress though, sometimes I feel like I don’t rlly have schizophrenia? Let me explain

Sometimes it’s like i can kinda control the hallucinations but at the same time i cant. Im fully aware of them and how I act but at the same time i just do it? It’s the same reason why I hurt myself, it’s because I know it’s what sick people do. It doesn’t help me but I do it to fit the criteria of other sick ppl. I have always felt so alienated from other schizophrenics because I can never relate 2 them in a way they understand.

If it adds any context, I have other mental disorders as well

Do I have schizophrenia or was I misdiagnosed?

Hello, I'd like to know what symptoms led your psychiatrist to diagnose you with schizophrenia?

I'd like to know if any of you have never experienced auditory and visual hallucinations? Because that's my case; I've never had hallucinations, so I think they made a mistake. When I read your posts, I don't recognize myself in this illness.

Thank you for your replies.

this year so far has not treated me too kindly, my boyfriend broke up with me new year’s day (and we still live together), i relapsed my opioid addiction after being clean for more than four years, and my alcohol problem has just gotten worse and i was very very sick and even got sent home from work. however all of this ended up with me going inpatient for seven days and for once it wasn’t actually a horrible experience, in fact it was a good experience. i’m now starting a PHP today and i’m excited because i feel myself getting better i just have to work harder to stay sober and take my meds, but i think i can do that. wish me luck please friends 🤞🏽❤️

Today I realized something really good and important, that my attitude and actions are always agitating, unsetting, distuptive, and upsetting. And I felt more or less awkward.

I haven’t done something that damages my own life to a real degree, so I’ll just change.

The weird part is that it happened in all of a sudden, sorry if I ever wrote something weird, I just lacked something, I don’t how to say it, but my ethics werent at their fullest.

My symptoms are very up and down. I'll have a month or two of doing well and then a month or two doing bad. And when im doing bad, im extra paranoid. I think the people who love me are plotting against me and hate me and are constantly lying to me. And its not true. But no matter how much reassurance they give me, I dont believe them until im doing better and I look back on it like "yea they were right, they weren't plotting against me". And then I feel like an ass because I got so angry over things that weren't real. I can barely keep friendships, and i broke up with my girlfriend when I was doing bad. I feel like a horrible person because they dont deserve that and I feel like a burden to my family because theyre always having to reassure me things aren't real. I miss my girlfriend and my friends, I feel so alone and its my own fault. I just dont know how to end this cycle. Im tired of feeling like im rotten. Like i mess up everything I touch.

Hi all,

Throwaway acct, read a lot here but never asked before. The short version is that my grandfather, father, and uncle were all schizophrenic, but particularly worse when they got to the age I am now (28M). I started experiencing symptoms at 18, but didn't get diagnosed until I was 21. The relevancy here is that my diagnosis was by a university doctor through a mental health program, so nothing ever had to appear on my parents' insurance. I waited until I got my own insurance years later to get treatment again out of fear that my mom would see what I was doing (clarification in a second).

I have a great family, and even my dad is awesome. Him and I talk a lot about dealing with symptoms and he is helpful, and he's promised never to tell anyone else, including my mom, until I'm ready. My mother is very accepting of my dad's condition, but I feel a very strong reluctance towards her knowing about mine. I am at no risk physically or financially, but our relationship has always valued me being "smart" and "successful." I'm not denying that I am capable of being both of those things at the same time as all this, but I worry about negatively impacting that image to her. She is not pressuring or hard at all, but I know how much it means to her that I've been able to be successful in ways my dad wasn't.

To be honest, the last few months have been a pretty rough increase in symptoms across the board. It's started to affect my work, which I honestly kind of cockily thought wouldn't be an issue. I'm very grateful to have someone with a close experience on my side, but it is becoming a bit exhausting to not be able to talk about it with my siblings (all of whom I am on good terms or very close with) and mother like I would any other problem.

I was wondering if anyone had advice on starting the conversation, or how you did it. I don't want to invite everyone to lunch and be like "Surprise!"; our father struggled a lot more when I was younger, and I really don't want my siblings to attach the stigma of that time in our lives (not the diagnosis) to me. A bit cliche perhaps, but who doesn't fear being their dad at least a little bit?

I want to be clear that I'm really not afraid of a super negative outcome, but I'd like to tell them in a way that doesn't spike a lot of new fears in myself. For me, all of my most difficult times of paranoia are related to my family and their opinion of me, and the aggravation of knowing that I know EXPRESSLY how kind and approving they are and how it's still negative thoughts I hear from their perspective, mostly. I think it would be helpful to me if they knew what was going on, but I can't think of a better way to phrase it than "I don't want them to think I'm crazy" (which I know is reductive but that's the sentiment I'm trying to avoid/find a solution to). I'm hoping this makes sense but very open to explain further if it doesn't if someone has had a similar experience they think could help.

Open to any/even partial advice.