Schizophrenia and What a Psychotic Episode is Like

Yours does not describe all schizophrenic episodes, so u might not want to make light of what u have been spared.

Hi Elizabeth i am just beginning to understand schizophrenia. I had been dating a wonderful man who would move mountains for me. He stood by me through a horrible divorce i was going through and was my rock for the last year and half. He recieves a shot once month and has a bit anixety thats all. Well after a family bbq and talk of repainting his porch and bathroom he got a tad weird. I have two kids we were packed to go to his house and out of no where he said i dont feel good dont come. I was angry and said fine go home.i recieved a text saying ur affecting my ment all health negativity i can no long continue our relationship. He then didnt talk to me for over a week and when he finally did he said i love i miss and we were planning a coffee visit but again after he attended another family bbq i recieved a email saying i cant text or email any more i need to get my stuff...so i have now stopped talking to him as he requested. Iam worried about him ,unsure of my next step.what are your thoughts here ? He is a very kind soul... very odd for him.

Thanks for your reply. Perhaps its nothing to do with me at all. Something to think about

I would definitely say he struggles in groups of people, as I'm very similar. I'm all right one to one but put me in a group and I forget 'how to act' I get really conscious of myself and my thoughts , which can trigger "the voices". Best thing to do is talk to him and try and get him to explain what made him feel uncomfortable. Then see how u can avoid this or maybe help by introducing him to your family members one at a time to increase comfortability and reduce anxiety levels. A room full of strangers can be very daunting for anyone never mind if you are ill.

all i said was they put me in front of the camera when i was a child and the thing got so jealous that it started talking about how i look in pictures now. i have a whole bunch of good pictures now so it doesn't matter or bother me much.

i dunno why all my bad pictures are with ppl i hate and are cruel to me. you can go to the police and get back the pictures saying they can't use your image or photos without your consent but i already told the police a ton of stuff. i remember it crying bc all those pictures in france and my birthdays in sri lanka were lost, i lost them and it hurt the thing like 'oh dear' but i'm ok.

This illness sounds like my life

My experiences have been much more frightening like a scary movie. I am a wife, mother of 4 and had an amazing career. I lost everything but my teenage daughter and special needs youngest. On welfare, lost my career, home, marriage, you name it.
My last was 11 years ago after 2 long months in a hospital psych ward, finally the right combination of meds worked and i recovered over time but still had lost 2 of my children. My teenager is now in her late 20's and doesnt want to know me.
There is life after psychosis. I am remarried to a saint who is also raising my special needs child. I have weekend parental custody of the 2 I lost and we are extremely close.
Stay on your meds no matter what you think life will be like without them. If i can have a very good looking, in shape guy love me at 200 lbs. Unconditionally, you can have that too ON YOUR MEDS. You can only have chaos and paranoia, anxiety, fear and an ugly side to life if you dont take the meds that balance the chemistry in your brain. Thats all that meds do, we dont produce enough serotonin like "regular people" do.
Good Luck fellow Schizophrenic friends. I have the schizo-effective disorder, too.

Thank you. Bad day. Watched 'the Voices' last night... The first 20 minutes anyway. I hate the way people react. I'm a former chef and an educated artist(on the good days). So what if I also have days where I cant leave my house.
And another thing. I'm not the person I was before I got on medication anymore. That guy was terrified all the time anyways. Psychosis is scary. It's also embarrassing when people think it's ok to bring up stories of things you did when you weren't in reality. Sooooo embarrassing.

thanks for mentioning how embarrassing it is for you when people bring up those stories. I've done that with my son, but i will not anymore.

I've spoken to strangers on the street as if I knew them. Once the conversation got to a certain point, I walked away embarrassed. I didn't know these people and I realized it. I was sure at first and felt confident in my conversation. Walking away was embarrassing. My episodes in the past were close together, but 15 years had passed and I was right back to where I was then. My only change in recent weeks has been the voices. Now I'm back hiding in the house.

When my boyfriend layss computer keyboard over his phone I feels as though he has something to hide I have been excusing him of texting other women just and I feel in my heart he is even he has offered me to go through his phone and said he is not texting nor cheating but when he turns his phone upside places the keyboard over it or sometimes lay it flat to where you can see the face of the phone just want to know is this a Schizophrenia episode I stop taking my meds so just wondering if he is or if I having an episode because this happen quite often

"People do not need to fear people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or their psychotic episodes." - I think you need to be extremely careful when sharing this information. If you look into the Phil Walsh death, you will see that his son, who stabbed him 20 times was suffering from a psychotic episode as a result of undiagnosed schizophrenia.

haunt been out the house for 6 weeks,frightened of people even feel anxious when my partners there and my son.Fed up with this illness I just wish I could get well.

so sick of being stereotyped as "crazy" or "psycho". It is not a laughing matter. Its scary & hard to live with. Instead of being totally oblivious to what it actually is and how hard it is to make it through a day...why not just brush up with some facts of how truly difficult it is to live with. #itsuxxxx.

I am schizoaffective and even on my meds i am paranoid of people, certain places, things too. Voices are confusing and hard for me. I dont want to be out of touch with reality but i do and it seem so real when i am alone talking to tha voices too.

I am 56, male. My mother has been suffering from the disease since adolescence. She is practically untreatable since she is not aware she is mentally ill. I became paranoid in 1982. I heard voices and smelt phenyle. I got scared that I was going insane. I was super aware of my surroundings. I lost the ability to concentrate on whatever I was trying to do. I thought people were following me whenever I heard footsteps. I misinterpreted facial expressions and snippets of overheard conversa tion and came to the conclusion that people were talking about me in a derisive manner, I isolated myself from society. But fortunately my inherited illness was not as serious as my mother's. So I had the sense to guess that I had a mental illness, probably the same one that my mother had. I badly wanted to become normal, but did not know which way I should go. So I went to the library and read about all the known mental illnesses and the description of schizophrenia given in the Merrck Manual of medicine fit my experience perfectly. And the remedy? "Force your mind to concentrate on work, no matter how difficult it may seem. Avoid imaginative thinking. Learn the nature of the illness and you will be cured." The first task was Herculean because my mind would not come off of the unwanted thoughts. The second I did not understand. What is imaginative thinking? My thoughts appeared quite real to me, So I rejected the second advice and followed the first one diligently. And to my surprise it paid off! One fine day I suddenly felt myself normal! No disturbing thoughts, no hallucinations. Now I tried to figure out what else had changed. I noticed one major difference in my experience. Previously whenever I heard the horn of a car or bus, I would see the vehicle in my mind. But now I could only hear the sound. All the years from childhood I was seeing the image of whatever was making the sound and thought that was normal. Now I realised that it was abnormal. Normal people heard sounds but did not see the objects making the sounds in their mind's eye. Creating the mental image of something that is not visible is imagination. Believing that the object really is like its mental image is delusion. Mental imagery seems very real, The key to recovery is not to argue with the image but to avoid it in the first place. Now I understood the second advice: avoid imaginative thinking. Think, but do it in such a way that no image is formed in the mind. I have been practising this since that time. I relapsed a couple of times but always managed to come back to reality by following the afore mentioned two advices. The last advice in that article was: Learn the nature of the illness and you will be cured. So I am cured. Without medicine. I hope everyone gets cured like me, but perhaps my illness was mild. Nevertheless, I have written my experience for what it is worth. It is tempting to think imaginatively, but unlike a normal person who knows it is imagery, a schizophrenic doesn't. Imagery seems so real if you are schizophrenic that you believe it and get hooked. So think, but without creating images. Leave imaginative thinking to the nons.

I’m glad I cam across this page. My mom has this disorder. I never really saw her go through a episode until I came home from college. It scared me for the first couple of nights. She is currently going through her second episode. I’m not as scared anymore. Plus I’ve been reading these comments and so now I don’t feel alone.

hi there, i am in a current relationship with a man, with this illness...he is currently having a psycotic break, and I have been acused, with so miany things, mostly always having to do do with sex??? why? these accusations are very real to him,, and he firmly believes this.....what do i do???

My Son 23 was just diagnosed schizophrenic approximately 10 months ago. hes been in an out of the phsyc ward, he is now on an injection of Invega its supposed to last every 30 days. well the last one only lasted 3 weeks,when he got his next shot he was already in a phsychosis. they increased his dose and he still hasn't come out of his psychosis and its been 1 1/2 weeks. why is this happening? any advise you can give a mom of adult son with schizophrenia ?

My son was diagnosed a year ago. He has been hospitalized three times. He is on his 4th abilify injection. He still hears voices and he says they tell him to do bad things. Recently hi punched the bathroom mirror and cut up his hands in front of his twin sister. Said he was hearing voices. Then like a light switch he told her that he was sorry, that he loved her and didn’t want her to be afraid. He chain fake smokes. I think he calls it French inhaling where he releases the smoke from his mouth and draws it back through his nose. He has a religious compulsion. He was wearing religious clothes: a Yamuna, crown of thorns, whit robe, sandals in the winter etc. I had to confiscate the mail. He eventually lost his small job. He told me his legs feel heavy on Abilify and his feet hurt. Also he doesn’t sleep. He’ll go in and out of the house constantly at night and won’t take his sleeping pill. I think part of his problem is lack of sleep which I believe makes him more irritable and hear more voices. he’s restless and bored. It was my understanding that by this 4 th injection the voices would be quieter. He blames the medicine for the voices. I think he’s heard voices for a long time.don’t think Abilify is his medicine nor respidol which makes his tongue tremble. He is only 19. Hopefully I can get him to read these comments and learn to understand his illness but right now he always say “no more drugs Ma.” I know it’s going to take time but he’s so resistant to medicine. I’ve joined NAMI and encourage my daughters to go to gain understanding. One day at a time

Schizoaffective psychosis as subtype of schizophrenic psychosis encompass at the same time schizophrenic and mood disorders that require more inventive and more eloquent psychiatric treatment and management, as well. Since it incorporate double dimensional psychotic course, it should be included antipsychotic and psychostabilizator medication, in order to interrupt cyclic and processual evolution of this alternate psychosis. However, in due time application and taking of prescription psychiatric medication gives opportunity to convinient outcome of this multifarious psychotic disorder. Appropriate psychiatric treatment of this psychotic underline long-time and satisfying remissions with short and light episodes of psychotic worsening. This positive course of schizoaffective psychosis warrants more efficient global life functioning, that diminish social stigma to this chronic endogenous psychosis .

My son was diagnosed at 23 and my life has not been the same, from watching the decline in his health, behavior and self- elected choices. I couldn’t manage the behaviors and still raise my younger children. I tried to get him help through counseling , meds , mentors , job training - you name it. But he is determined to play with taking his meds - the injections don’t seem to work. He has been in and out of the hospital at least 3 times this year. Now while hospitalized he still refuse to take his meds. The docs had to get a court order !!! I feel so bad saying me but his episodes tear me down for days as a parent - I can’t focus - I can’t work - I am up all night and high levels of anxiety bc I feel like I can’t help my son. I just don’t understand why he refuses to take meds and is determined to smoke weed. I am mentally drained. I don’t know what else to do or think. I am mentally drained.

Hi, I recently started working in an office and I believe my coworker might be schizophrenic. The first 3-4 weeks of working with her she would tell me these off the wall stories about how her ex boyfriend had people watching her, breaking into her apartment stealing “notes” she’d been keeping about the situation she thought was happening, and pumping some sort of drug or poison into her apartment via the hvac venting system. She was scared for her life. She also would tell me about how other coworkers were trying to poison her. And sad stories of how her daughters don’t talk to her and neither do her parents, and she had no one to talk to or help her. I honestly didn’t know what to think at first, then the more I thought about it, I realized this maybe an episode. She has been normal now for about 3 weeks; no more talk about people out to get her. I obviously don’t know her well, and I don’t even know if it was a psychotic episode, but it was so out there that I’m now researching to find out more about this disease. The question I have is: now that she seems stable and level headed, is it appropriate to ask about the things she was telling me during the “episode”? I really do want to help if I can, I just don’t know the first thing about this. Thank you

Do you think articles that talk about schizophrenia are accurate? I’m looking it up because it’s quite interesting to read about. Wish you the best!

Not all people who have psychosis are violent but the way people downplay and gaslight those who have been violated and threatened by those in the grip of psychosis is not ok. I have mental health issues too and as much as I do not want to stigmatize there has to be a middle ground. To know that many who deal with psychosis are not violent AND that those who are violent need to be held accountable. I do not believe any mental illness, even breaks with reality, justify someone hurting or murdering another. Ever. People can empathize sure but this world is not fair and that is just how it is. Victims of the psychotic need to have empathy as well I am sick of everyone only feeling bad for the mentally ill person. No ones life matters though not in todays society every human is only caring for themselves and their own skins. Period. Also I used to watch your videos on youtube Elizabeth I knew your name was familiar. They were good.