I was sick since the age of 3, I have no memory of me not sick, I think we could not necessarily say that I was schizophrenic from 3 years old but at the age of 12, with my symptoms, I think we had to be able to establish it. I was not treated until the age of 23, because I did not have very visible symptoms (such as big hallucinations), I had above all a deep malaise, intense paranoia, strange ideas, the impression that I was demonic and unhealthy and that I was afraid of contaminating others by this, and that the fact that I could contaminate them was another reason for thinking that I was unhealthy and demonic, I was ashamed and afraid that people would know the content of my thoughts, because I felt them to be frankly unhealthy in the eyes of others.
That's why I hid my illness and my thoughts, that I didn't tell anyone about my illness. I saw a psychiatrist voluntarily from the age of 17, I made this gesture to consult him hoping that there was a solution (it was desperate because I was extremely afraid that there was no solution and that it would throw me into madness), but finally I hid from him that I frankly had paranoid symptoms (which would have made it possible to make the diagnosis), because I was afraid that if he knew it he would lock me up all my life in a psychiatric hospital because, not being sure that I was schizophrenic, I feared that he would think that I have an even more serious mental illness and that would push me to become dangerous ( my impulse phobias would have been proof that people like me become dangerous at some point in the eyes of doctors).
So I was followed by a psychiatrist until I was 19 years old without him understanding that I was schizophrenic and without him giving me the appropriate treatment. Giving my feelings, my feelings to this doctor without having the appropriate treatment frankly bothered me, and although this episode passed today, my consultations with him were experienced as a psychic rape because I lived them as forced, indeed I was afraid that if I left him, would not see him anymore, so he makes me lock up, too, the sharing of my ideas with him was experienced as a rape, as if I was telling a super disturbing thing to someone that I did not want him to hear. I was constantly afraid after the end of these consultations that he would come back and have me locked up for life, I was constantly afraid of that, and that's also why I felt these consultations as rape: their existence prevented me from becoming serin again, so it had destroyed me until the end of my life.
It was at the age of 23, after someone urged me to smoke a highly concentrated cannabis firecracker (during my first year of medicine) that I had a memorable anxiety attack and began receiving treatment.
It's very sad and painful to think that all your childhood was suffering but that's the way it is. It's hard to explain, but I still kept hope, a utopian, crazy hope, but it was still there all the time.
I continued my studies for a few years and gave up, I did not have the self-confidence, the motivation, the ability to concentrate and work, and the aplomb sometimes necessary to be a doctor.
I had created an account on the forum schizophrenia Atoute with this nickname (e884571) in 2011 (approximately) because at the time I was worried that we could know my identity with the nickname and so to be sure to remain anonymous, I put a nickname that could not give indications about me. I was just kind of a bit paranoid (although I had a treatment that made me not so bad) and I worried too much that the fact that I was schizophrenic might be known, and I worried that, if people I knew ended up knowing that, I can no longer stand their judging gaze on my self, too disturbing.
I think there are really misconceptions circulating about schizophrenia, and that's why I urge people suffering from this disease not to tell everyone, so as not to risk being frowned upon. And also, if you ever tell someone you don't know well, if they end up getting angry with you, they could make you walk by threatening to divulge that information, which can't happen if you don't tell people you don't know little. But I must also admit that I was paranoid and worried too much about this, and that I could not stand in a sickly way the look of others and their judgment that I imagined on me, so the fact that I knew that others know that I am schizophrenic would have deeply disturbed me and made life unlivable. That was the way it was, fortunately it improved quite well.