Like the author, the world was not less with me. I too found another world pervading the one that everyone else acknowledged. In contrast with the author, I was also taught many things about this second world in church, and Sunday and parochial school classes. [Religious content is very often a part of paranoid delusions.] The difference for me was that when I began to describe my experiences in this second world to my family [for example, the intrusion of Satan and his demons] they and our religious leaders, if they did not first conclude that I was possessed, decided I was insane or simply acting out. I was shocked by their response, which in my mind, was a denial of what I learned for years under their tutelage. Many went to great lengths to convince me that I was mentally ill. Others avoided me at all cost.
To protect the beliefs in which I had been schooled, I put up a protective wall around me, as did those that now feared me. Communications were cut off with everyone except my psychiatrist.
The walls I had created to protect myself, especially from my family and the church, came down once my psychiatrist and I found a medication that worked for me. Over the ten years I had been actively psychotic my psychiatrist had taught me very effective coping skills, which, with the new medications, I was then able to fully implement. I reentered society fully functional.
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Please remember, this writing reflects my own experience and opinions. If you, or a loved one, are experiencing the symptoms of schizophrenia, or any other mental illness, you should seek professional assistance.
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