Archives: Symptoms

One of the reasons is that I felt that I was very sick, that this disease was likely to make me suffer excruciatingly until the end of my life. This intense fear of ending my life crazy, anxious, tramp (because I adult because of this anxiety, I know that I could not work) created kind of quick bursts of anxiety (which lasted a fraction of a second) that came and went and then came back and so on, I lied to myself and I hoped that I had nothing very serious, that I should not be abnormal. I felt it was ridiculous that I felt really sick, in reality I only had a little bike in my head and it was kind of my fault. As these mental illnesses I had heard about scared me very much, I tried to lie to myself by telling myself that I should not have this, yet the evidence of my suffering led me to think that it was, so, from my point of view anosognosia is not the right term for this fellin.

And then as told previously I was afraid to share my feelings for fear of being thought crazy, that it would stick with me: I knew rightly that I would have a disturbing fear of being thought of as a seriously dangerous crazy person with this person until ‘at the end of my life, just if I’d told him once what’s really going on in my head.

Also it must be made clear, the principle of some delusions is that we are convinced that there is a thing, we can be aware that it is not okay, but deep down, we can not reason as if we were not convinced of his idea, even if we think that it is frowned upon, Surely false, that most people do not have it, but the reflexes of reasoning are based on the fact that our intuition is true, even if reason pushes to correct these reasonings after having had them.

If, for example, it is an idea that other people can persecute us or find us crazy, we may realize that it makes us sick and that we will not be able to continue all our lives with such ideas that anguish us terribly, whether others (or even before being sick, if the patient has not always been sick) do not have such ideas. But if we meet the person we imagine wants to hurt us or finds us crazy, we will mechanically tend to feel his presence as hostile, even if we are aware that we are next to our pumps and that we should not think that.

As these ideas are abnormal, they make us suffer, we can imagine that these ideas could push us to be mean, then all this can push us not to want to have these ideas and intuitions and to see them as parasitic ideas/intuitions. It is then that we can try not to have them, but it is impossible, it does not leave despite the good will.

… that whatever we do (a pathological move, that is to say the fact of moving hoping that life will be better elsewhere, changes in our life, the fact of being in a relationship with the girl we love etc.) that nothing solves the problem that we are led to think that the problem comes from our brain, that we have to go see a psychiatrist. I think that a good part of people can realize that they were not like before the beginning of the disease and then go to consult, but I, I have always been sick so, I did not have a point of reference to tell me that something weird had happened to me, and I didn’t have a close enough friend to talk about it.

For example, at the beginning when we are sick, if we imagine that someone wants us harm we can think that it is real, indeed, in the past, when we were not sick, our mind never betrayed us and when we feared that someone bothered us it was often very real, so suddenly we can think that it is well justified this time too, their brain has never messed up, there is no reason for it to mess up today. That’s why, maybe some people don’t have a critical aspect at the beginning of their illness.

I had heard in a few tv shows what schizophrenia was, it worried me enormously and although I had no hallucinations or very minimal, I recognized myself in the descriptions, the fact that their life seemed ruined, made me an unimaginable fear.

In fact I did not project myself into the future, except into a beautiful and radiant utopian future where by miracle I would be well, I could work, and I would be efficient, doctor, president of the republic, writers, physicist, that is to say efficient as I imagined that people should perceive me. But I knew deep down that it was utopian.

The discomfort, the anxiety I had, prevented me from imagining myself in the future, I kept a hope. Since at first glance my anxiety, paranoia and all my symptoms would continue to be there as they have been there since I was 3 years old.

I didn’t dare to imagine the years to come, I didn’t dare to tell myself when I would be an adult, I would have a car and a job and I would be happy. If I had been honest with myself, not knowing that there are medications, I should have understood that I would end my life in a psychiatric hospital plagued by worry. The intense social worry, the fear of appearing strange with every word I speak in a conversation, the fear of the slightest effort, exhausting myself psychically enormously with the phobias of increasing impulse, I could not hold.

If I had had a job, a car, a home, I would have had the anxieties in the manner of Tanguy from the film, but downright worse, and because only the presence of my parents really reassured me, everything else only added anxieties so I was afraid to grow up and leave home.

As I feared ending up in a psychiatric hospital if I told a doctor about my worries, I then had no way out except to continue as people wanted me to continue and as my parents wanted: to go to school and college… but after?

…I was afraid that people would understand that I was schizophrenic, and I didn’t want that so, suddenly I didn’t share my feelings too much (yet often these ideas could also happen in people without schizophrenia)

During the delusions of schizophrenias, the impressions that I describe in the other articles accumulate and accumulate very quickly, the patient can be aware that they have nothing to do there or not, that the others do not think that or not, that he would like to stop thinking about that or not, but that’s not enough, they continue to stay there and accumulate, so we can try to fight against these ideas, but we won’t succeed, even if we think very hard: “It’s frowned upon to think that I have to stop thinking that”.

…for me, I have always felt these ideas as unpleasant and that I wish they weren’t there, but until I was about 18 I hoped they could leave by pairing me up with a girl I like or working in simple jobs without pressure social as a waiter and leaving as a wanderer, financed by these odd jobs living in the forest, I think that’s how some people make pathological moves where they hope that their psyche will improve following this move, to live in another place. Of course the fact that the doctor explains that by giving the treatment it will help him can quite persuade the person to take this treatment, the person will try and see that it improves the situation. Some people are afraid to take a psychotropic treatment, it’s normal to have this kind of fear, to fear that their brain will change irreversibly because of the treatment, especially when you are worried about everything like in schizophrenia. But I think it should be explained that it is reversible and that when treatment is stopped, it comes back as before.

Indeed in this case, it is above all necessary to convince the patient that taking the treatment will help him to feel better, to help him to stop worrying excessively, that he will have more ideas clear to better make future decisions and not the opposite.

You also have to explain that it’s a known disease that happens to other people even if the other people don’t have the same thoughts, they are also worried and they think everything time very quickly etc… It will help to understand that giving the treatment will help him as it helps other people with the same problem.

It's very possible that my family must have worried about me, I don't really know, it bothers me a little to think about it, maybe because my psychiatric illness remains for me in the realm of the intimate.

… if his family had to support the sick person. For me, to feel like I was in charge of my family would have been a shame, a suffering and a great guilt, I would have experienced it very badly, I would have atrociously blamed myself for being really a burden.

I had trouble working, it's always a little bit the case, and I can be self-employed but a job with a fixed schedule seems impossible to me, because I sleep a lot, I have trouble concentrating, I need to distract myself often, the fact of doing something that I may find completely useless will despair me to the highest point, outside I felt this for most of the trades.

That may be a little apart from most schizo, but not having time to try to realize some of my projects if I had to work would make me suffer to a crazy point.

Even without a being a burden for my family, I felt guilty for being a burden for society, so I blamed myself for not liking to work because I would have to work so as not to be a burden for all, yet at the same time I felt that most of the trades were useless or sometimes harmful, I was torn because of this between the obligation to work to do well and not to do the jobs that I consider harmful.

As I have said elsewhere, people with psychiatric disorders only have an exacerbation of normal brain phenomena. And I think it’s the same in schizophrenia but very extreme often.

Here are the main features of my reasoning that explain these symptoms I had.

The fear that there is something persecuting me.

Fear of being persecuted is a normal phenomenon. Indeed people in a dangerous situation, for example when someone has just been attacked in the street in front of us, tend to worry about everything at once, to make scenarios. The delusion of persecution is I think this activation of this situation of danger. In this situation, the brain creates disturbing scenarios, which feel almost real. Like for example that the police will harass us. This will cause one to feel in a situation of danger which will cause scenarios of persecution etc. etc .

Stuck on certain ideas thinking they are very important.

For example during what I called a serotoninergic peak I tend to think that an idea is very important. It’s the same with megalomaniac ideas, where I think you absolutely have to achieve something because it’s very important. Ditto with the disorder ADHD Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (in french). Indeed in this disorder, our attention is captured by the slightest event because we believe that it really matters. There is a good video of a psychiatrist explaining a supposed ADHD mechanism on youtube (in french).

Also being very worried combined with feeling guilty and being afraid of hurting others.

I think it was these two fears combined that led me to have impulse phobias. These are scenarios where I imagined myself hurting others or hurting myself. Like throwing myself under a train. In truth I was afraid that I would end up doing it one day, but I didn’t want to do it. I would never have done that.

The fear of being frowned upon often led me to tell myself that my ideas were completely stupid.

I often felt that: to make concepts, ideas on things, then to end up thinking that it is really stupid to have thought that. In reality, this is also a symptom: it is due to being afraid of the judgment of others.

Fear of being frowned upon (susceptibility) and fear of being persecuted

Sometimes I fear that someone will think I’m crazy and ignore me because of that, it bothers me. Especially if I imagine that person will pass on the message that I am crazy to other people. This kind of scenario has already taken my mind a little too much, even if it was bearable since I was on treatment. But when you think about it, it’s the combination of the fear of being frowned upon and the fear of being persecuted (imagining that the word that I’m crazy is passed on to others) that causes this.

For the autistic symptoms that I have experienced, there is the fear of feeling badly seen. There is also the lack of feeling complicity and understanding others in their actions.

When I didn’t understand the jokes it was often because of a lack of complicity. I did not understand that the person teased me in many cases. I was also afraid of appearing unpopular. I was afraid to pass for the idiot misunderstanding the jokes, rather than getting into the game.

Jean Bernard Fourtillan’s hypothesis explains that schizophrenia is due to an excess of arousal hormone.

I quite agree, because all the phenomena that are exacerbated during awakening are extremely exacerbated during my schizophrenia. For example, often when we sleep, we are not too suspicious, not worried, rested, on the other hand as soon as we are awake we are more alert. Schizophrenia, we are downright too crazy on alert. Similarly, we are too afraid of the gaze of others, whereas in dreams, we don’t give a damn about the gaze of others. We get stuck on certain ideas… whereas in dreams even if we forget something, just afterwards, we don’t even realize that we forgot it. In schizophrenia, one is afraid of hurting others, usually in dreams one forgets the guilt. etc etc.
So yes for me Fourtillan’s hypothesis is not stupid at all. You can see him in his youtube videos.

Apparently some patients have anosognosia related to a lesion in the brain.

Here is an article explaining this (in french). And here is my article on it. Anosognosia is the fact of not being aware of one’s disorder and not at all questioning one’s psychotic intuitions. This anosognosia would be very real in some people. I did not know it and learned it recently while documenting myself. And indeed some schizophrenic patients talk about their ideas as if they were necessarily real. Having this idea is proof that it is true. I think it’s possible that it’s due to a circuit that is activated differently depending on the person concerned. Indeed, some schizophrenics have an excess of interest in absolutely everything (like me), others are sorely lacking in interest, making their life very painful. Similarly with anosognosia, certain circuits can be very deactivated. The awareness that the psychotic idea does not hold water well is not there. They don’t succeed in  prohibiting this idea as one can when one realizes that it is stupid.

Fear of looking weird, crazy, serious

Sounding weird in conversations is in my opinion, due to the intense fear of sounding weird, crazy. So I was, without treatment, so scared at every moment that I was talking about saying something shocking or serious without doing it on purpose, that my attitude and my blockages made me weird. I could look to others for approval. But when I looked at them, I felt judged and I was afraid, really afraid, of being judged as someone serious. I was paralyzed and worried all over.

Feeling unpopular, stressed in the background

I believe that my somewhat constant discomfort is due to this. Feeling badly seen and stressed, but in the background, without really understanding what is happening to me.

I find this article interesting because you can see that with just a few concepts, I can explain a good part of the symptoms of schizophrenia. That’s cool!

There is no limit between neurosis and psychosis, at least genetically it shows, GWAS studies that analyze the genes of people with anxieties and those with psychoses have not shown differences between the two groups. This fits well with my idea that psychic symptoms are usually just an exacerbation of a normal phenomenon.

I saw a video by Professor Fourtillan, where he explains that schizophrenia is due to a significant excess of the hormone of wakefulness, a hormone that acts on the majority of neurons in the brain. I find that this idea is not stupid at all and sticks quite well to what I felt and continues to feel on some points: the fact of being completely overawake. There is a video on this subject of him on his youtube channel:
Video explaining the hormone of wakefulness and sleep following Professor Fourtillan (it’s in french)
And here are other Professor Fourtillan’s videos explaining about the same thing, some of which are in English.

I sometimes get a little interested in schizophrenia research thinking that infections could play an important role because toxoplasmosis has a role, and one researcher made this hypothetical link between infections and Fourtillan's hypothesis about schizophrenia. I find his hypotheses quite interesting, you can access the document explaining this here:
A dormant infection in the eye could cause most cases of schizophrenia

And if a crevice grew and if we had to step over it to save ourselves, not to die, but if it was already too big, that we would have had to react before. Since I imagined this scenario as almost real at the moment I imagined it, and I didn't want to accept that I die if I stayed on the other side of the crevasse, then I replayed the scenario in a loop.

The fact of blocking on a situation without solution to seek endlessly a solution, remains one of my characteristics today, being adult and cared for.

As another scenario, I could tell myself: what if I had to choose if one person should suffer instead of another, and if. As if the situation really presents itself, or at least that it is really likely to arise. That was when I was without a medoc. It is surely a little normal to imagine such a thing when you are young, situations that could happen, to try to find how to act, so, if such a situation happens to us we are already a little prepared, evolution has favored this kind of idea for young people to prepare to react in possible situations, however, in my case, I imagined crazy scenarios, like and whether I had to choose between the death of my father or my mother and it tortured me!

I give the example of the idea that it is likely that people have agreed to kill us to support the idea that logic remains in the mind, it is first of all that counter-arguments are not taken into account. This idea may indeed not be logical in a way, because if we think about it, such an event, that is to say a murder, never happens or not more than 1 in 100,000 people, so there is no reason for it to happen to us more than that, unless we think that we are very important and that for that people would like to kill us, for example if we are working on an important project, but then we can wonder if this project is really known by other people who could blame us, and if really people would be willing to kill us just for that. But the anxiety is such that we forget to make such a questioning and to consider them well. And if someone tells us: think, no one wants to kill you, it never happens that people randomly kill other people, then actually this idea will come to the mind of the delusional person, he will actually realize that his worries are exaggerated, but he will continue to worry, and his brain stronger than his reason will continue to create disturbing scenarios.

It reminds me of a certain, well-known columnist who if he were told that Muslims were not dangerous, his mind would have managed to constantly construct flawed observations on why there is a conspiracy of Muslims against France. This columnist would almost be afraid to become sensible again, because so convinced that Muslims are dangerous for the France, it would be dangerous to become wise again because in this case, he would not fight against them, who in his opinion really, necessarily represent a threat.

I think he is someone who is not aware that most people, including Muslims are good people (I think most people are not heroes, but most people are bothered to make others suffer), so it reinforces his ideas. In addition, I think he does not have the ability to realize that these attacks hurt these people.

There are also delusions that convince people (it seems good to me), that they are true, very pleasant and reassuring, often supernatural I believe. others that may be felt as to be rejected. I do not pretend to know all the delusions that happen in psychiatric pathologies, but I hope that the testimony of mine can help caregivers to better understand their patient.

The proof that logic can be preserved is that during my second first year of medicine I arrived ranked in the top 30 out of 1800 students in the first semester on tests in cell biology, chemistry and physics, these 3 subjects being all based on reflection and logic.

Indeed the part of the second semester on what was called human and social science of which some subjects talked about law and therefore based somewhere on what people feel, was at the time very difficult for me to understand because it referred to the feelings of others, which I did not understand. Although I tried to put myself in their shoes, I couldn't understand how others felt.

I felt yes, but very different things, like intense social anxiety, malaise, paranoia, fear of being weird or demonic, so it was also impossible for me to put myself in their place. I lived differently, more precisely, I survived, I lived extreme stuff.

And I thought that because I was going through this I was completely abnormal and it scared me.

I didn't feel like I was loved by this girl, but I was attracted to the point of obsession, I don't know if what I experienced has a name.

I had fallen in love with a girl who lived far away, who was in the city next door, where when I was little, it was the end of the world, the fact that she lived in this city made me feel like she was a distant girl, a little cold, mysterious and attractive, a bit like when we envy as a child those who take risks to do stupid things quite daring, when even, it would scare us very much and it would bother us to do them. In some ways, I felt she was like me, about being kind and tolerant. So she gave me the impression that she could overcome the disturbing things because she lived far away, in this disturbing environment for me, wilder. It made me feel like she was one of those people who arrived, without seeming to force herself to be strong in situations where I was deeply worried, and that worried me and at the same time attracted me. Yet she seemed to be like me, she was both familiar and extraterrestrial (because she managed to overcome this kind of fear), I was in admiration in my mind although I tried not to show it.

… before she left high school to teach at the CNAM remotely. For me who felt totally extraterrestrial compared to others, completely not normal, the fact that she had this same symptom as me gave me the impression that she was like me, it created a reassuring side, I think she left high school because these derealizations became unbearable for her, as for me. She had had this chance to leave these things that made her suffer, maybe that's what saved her and that she had healed unlike me whose life was screwed. It hurt me to tell myself that. So I should have fought against myself, and told my parents that I no longer held and that I wanted to stop high school to do it at the CNAM, when it would have extremely bothered me to do this out of modesty not to want to show that I was crazy to my parents since I felt my discomfort as disturbing, ashamed. So I felt guilty for not having done this, when it would have deeply bothered me to do it, but maybe also a helped enough because it is true that I lived very very badly in high school, with the fear of people's judgments, the intense stress of getting angry by the teachers as I rarely did my homework, the stress of getting up early.

I was crazy that if I went out with her as we were the same and I told her about my life, it could have saved me… At the same time I felt that it was a crazy belief to hope for this, but I was desperate.

The extreme fear of seeing, of imagining myself, the girl I was in love with and who seemed, in my mind, to have the same frailties as me, and perhaps the only one on earth to be like me, to be comfortable in situations where I was terrorized created a kind of dread for me. It made me say that I was lost forever, the only one on earth to be like this and that this girl was able to escape narrowly but not me. For example, having a job, making love, or imagining that in her boarding school she makes partouzes! it hurt me, I felt like I was the last psychically fragile and ridiculous idiot on earth, that it was not normal to be so worried and that it had been silly to imagine that she could be like me. I felt completely dropped, overwhelmed. I was afraid of ending up in a psychiatric hospital plagued by constant terror, not the others. I was the last silly guy to have crazy meaningless thoughts.

I wondered: is this normal jealousy? Do others feel this way when they are jealous? I thought that I certainly wasn't and that was one more reason to think that I'm serious.

I saw myself, as usual, responsible for this madness in me, and I had to try to prevent it, I imagined that others would have resented me, would have found me null, if they saw all this madness in me, I rejected myself, I disagreed with myself, I had to change internally.

I felt guilty continuously, not a moment of respite to tell myself that in this story, basically, I was the victim, the victim of my psychiatric illness and have a little sadness of it. Even the pity towards me disappeared little by little towards fear and it worried me to see myself disappear.

I was dehumanizing these people that I didn't feel like me, they didn't have the same value, they didn't really matter, even if I didn't want to hurt them. They didn't have all my knowledge of what is right, that you have to be tolerant, that it's important to be tolerant, that you always have to find a way to agree between people, and that gave them less value in my eyes, and then as he was not really like me, I wasn't trying to figure out how they felt like I was doing with this girl etc.

I thought of her and her gaze judging me, I was afraid that she would judge me as a different person that she could then have despised because I was one of the non-tolerant people, those who did not like children, who could be racist, those who want to do banal jobs and not medicine or nursing (she wanted to be a nurse) because in my mind it was the only valid professions to really do good, indeed all scientific professions, I thought, risk leading to the end of the world because, one day, of the power of science.

I was terribly afraid to pass in his mind for an asshole, this is one of the reasons with the fear of the danger of other scientific disciplines in the long term that pushed me to do medicine, a crazy reason that will create discomfort later.

I was making movies on a loop where I told myself that if I saw her and if I tried to persuade her that I was not an asshole, when there is somewhere no reason for her to think that, then she would take me for a fool to want to persuade her of this and that I have this fear all the time, so I couldn't stand what I imagined of her judgment that she took me for a madman, that I could not stand it and that suddenly I try the person that I am not a dangerous madman and so on.

Although the few times I saw her, she seemed nice, I dreaded her judgment he totally obsessed me, as if he was mean and I had no right to tell me that she was going to cook an egg.

I wouldn't have been mean in practice. I was afraid to be one of those erotomaniac madmen who apparently end up killing their lovers as I heard once during my medical classes, in my mind the erotomaniacs were seen as sick people who end up killing themselves or their lover. I had impulse phobias and it was one more argument in my mind to be afraid that one day I would go crazy and kill her. I would never have killed this girl, but for sure, without treatment, the fear of her negative judgment on me would have obsessed me endlessly.

I have a friend whom I think is hysterical, he is doing well in periods, and bad at other times. I believe that he is going badly especially when he sees a lot of people for too long and he is better when he isolates himself for several days and I believe that this is a phenomenon known in hysteria.

I think that for hysteria it is possible that the person feels the look of others as mean and judging, like it is normal to behave badly towards others, it is normal to give a damn about them. And that after seeing too many people he feels like that. That afterwards it pushes him to behave badly, himself feeling cornered by the eyes judging. There is also in hysteria a lot of hypochondria and some other symptoms.

The symptoms that persisted in me despite the treatments were as follows:

• I did not dare to say exactly what I thought when someone thought differently from me, I was timid, for fear of getting angry or hurt, I did not dare to oppose, this happened following the taking of Bactrim.
• I was afraid of being considered a very strange guy, and I was afraid of being frowned upon on many things, for a moment if in a conversation we talked about homosexuality, I was afraid of passing for homosexual and I felt the obligation to justify myself (in reality there were many other things on which I feared to be badly seen that the 'homosexuality, but I don't all remember it), it also happened after bactrim.
• I didn't understand jokes, I was intimidated if someone made a joke to me, being afraid of looking like an idiot if I didn't answer well, and I didn't understand people's reactions, I think there was less intonation in my voice and my tone was flat. It reminded me of Asperger's autism, I also had a score from an Asperger autism test very close to Asperger's autism. Following Bactrim all these symptoms came back in order and the score of the autism test even put me better than the average of the general population.
• I was quite paranoid, and I still am a little to worry about maybe too much about the state of the current democracy, even if given the number of people who worry about it, there may be reasons to worry.
• I probably still have a lot of small differences with the normal, but it goes well 🙂 what continues to bother me quite a bit is that the treatments are, in my opinion, not very good for my health, given how much they make me fat.