Schizophrenia is a demonic curse

I was kicked off in April from the schizophrenia forum sister site so I joined the Reddit schizophrenia community where many claim the demons they see are real and not just their imagination. This lines up with my delusions that people with schizophrenia are damned. I am a muggle and live in a world where there are no demons or magic, but nonetheless with each relapse my reality is altered a little bit more. I have insight even when I have delusions and I’ve seen evidence of ghosts when something banged on my bed during a trip to Nevada. I used to have normal empathy and felt it was gravely unjust to damn someone, but after relapses and what I believe is something ingrained in me in a therapy program I joined, I lost the ability to empathize and for the most part was only able to think happy thoughts. It pissed off some of my friends who felt I didn’t understand the pain they’re going through. A lot of bad things happened to me recently and I won’t go into detail about them but one of them is that my thoughts, emotions, and actions are being controlled. The psychiatrist mentions something in a meeting like “remember to eat dinner” and I start getting panic attacks and feel like I need to go to the hospital if I don’t I do it. Recently my appetite has gone up due to the same controller in my head and I gained a little weight and my parents are fat shaming me. They definitely want to see me marry and plan to travel abroad and become expats when they retire. They are starting to build a second house with a studio space set aside for me and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to live there all alone with the dogs so I’m in a hurry to marry as well and get more company/support in my life. My doctor’s latest request is that I join support group. I know this doesn’t sound bad, but the empathy feature in my brain is like a blacked out room and sometimes I don’t want to share about myself since I am a muggle and they often put extreme weight on things like what kind of family you have, people with “wealthy” backgrounds often end up controlling the group when they join, and overall I feel it is toxic to turn people against each other at a place designed to provide support. But lately the meetings are starting to intersect with my beliefs that people who attend the group are very often damned and that’s why they’re so stressed. Like one nice Chinese American old lady who still talks about WWII I really started growing fond of and lately she always shows up to group with this case manager who clearly is forcing the old lady out of her pride and dignity and I imagine might have damned her at the last minute. Another friend with schizophrenia is treated very badly by hospitals, case managers, an abusive bf, etc. but she is the type of person who always wants to work. I think I want to avoid support group but I’m being forced to attend. I am in debt in the thousands to ssa due to a mistake my mom made at the bank and I don’t know if appealing it will work. I should also commit to more time with my puppy because she’s kind of irreplaceable. It’s really hard these days because I’m pretty motivated but most things that happen are outside my control like things happening to me that I don’t know how to change. I’m sure it will get better if I end up marrying on time before my parents retire but I really have this sense of pride that makes me want to get things done on my own and not be constantly funneling my hopes on the future.

@Tukey I’m sorry that your parents are saying and doing things that make you upset. If you don’t feel comfortable in your support group maybe you can attend a different group. Are you taking medicine prescribed from your psychiatrist?

Yes I take meds. I think I complain about my parents because in the end they will get me to do what they want whether I agree or not. The doctor seems to think I’m doing well so she “recommends” support group. I believe that many of them are damned but even with that delusion there’s really limited information and the honest truth is I don’t know what they go through. I see surface stuff like my friend being engaged to a drug addict and doing other things that are most likely against her will. She says group homes would punish her for being even a few minutes late to curfew. But these things don’t just happen. At support group people usually keep it light but they look depressed and heavy hearted which is a reason why I don’t want to go. The sadness is contagious and quickly devolves into people sizing each other up as big or little. It wasn’t always like this and I’m definitely not as social since before my last relapse but it really sometimes turns into a freak show, especially now that it’s online. I need some Hawaiian taro and it really somehow makes my day a little worse. But I have to go.

By doctor’s standards, I am stable but even when I relapse I have full insight and can tell which aspects are part of my illness and I don’t lie to doctors because psychosis makes negatives and cognitive worse. However they knowingly will stall my treatment sometimes by saying my case isn’t serious enough or make it clear I shouldn’t act like reality is “just about everyday life”. After I stabilized, I asked people questions and thought about it and decided my old delusions were all partly true. It’s really a choice and not an unshakable belief. Something about having schizophrenia changes reality and redditors say often that schizophrenia is real and not in your head. It’s really unexplainable. People at support group say schizophrenia is not caused by demons but every time I adopt that belief or that you need to “get yourself out of that hole” I kind of get pushed back in (probably by the psychiatrist) and if I completely ignored unspoken rules which I’d love to do, my symptoms actually trigger and get worse. I’d love to just focus on my life like I go running everyday and I’d like to finish the book I started and put faith in God that this is just a trial and I will go to Heaven and what they say at support group makes me feel optimistic that this is a life worth living (without supernatural forces) but I’m literally not allowed to think that way or else my mental health will suddenly get worse.

@Tukey, are you saying thinking good thoughts and thinking positively is a trigger for you? If you start thinking good thoughts, are you saying your condition worsens?

Are you saying you’re conditioned to bad thoughts therefore, you’re more @ peace when you don’t feel happy or optimistic about things?

In some ways, yes. After my doctor mentioned that I should eat dinner, I started getting panic attacks every time I skip a meal. I don’t believe people would voluntarily skip meds because it seems to me there are no benefits in staying psychotic. But people probably often make poor choices because they were not given a choice. On Reddit they also sometimes say we have no free will. This is fine, but don’t blame the person who was forced to make a bad choice. And in any case, I don’t really like to stress over things I like to make a choice and go through with it. The high school I went to was private and one of the first things I learned in my first year is to look for solutions rather than cry over a problem. Even if you have no good solution, you shouldn’t freak out and turn to self harm or anything. But, anyways, at the moment support group probably wants to see me go back to my old self where I was happy and held a part time job and always talking about how much I still loved life despite the setback of schizophrenia. Maybe I should give that a try. Therapy and doctors put heavy emphasis on how I should keep myself healthy in hopes of getting into a good marriage one day but I feel like that thought is toxic.

1 Like

Maybe I should mention at support group that I help my mom with her job like I draw up all their floor plans now which saves them money and I help my mom with how to use technology and help her translate because her English isn’t great. :slight_smile: I kind of also like going out for food and exercising and I really like boba and caring for my dog. But I only help her for a few hours per week and my parents want to remind me my main goal is to get married and I should prioritize losing weight.