# Need some reassurance :( concerned about prodromal psychosis



## Mogwai Fan (Feb 3, 2013)

Hey everyone, made an account on here to see if anyone else had felt/experienced similar things to me and could convince me im not going nuts :S

Im a 17 year old guy living a very normal life: good childhood, enough friends, good social life, good relationship with parents. Despite these things I have been having issues with anxiety for about a year and a half after I began to feel anxious after smoking weed. For about a year I mainly felt anxiety symptoms such as:

- Fear of going crazy
- Fear of losing control
- Excess energy
- Racing heart
- Racing Thoughts 
- Restlessness

And basically all the other stereotypical anxiety symptoms although at the same time I felt mild derealisation, as if colours had lost their 'quality' or things looked a bit fake
I went to my family doctor and he reassured me that what I was experiencing was anxiety as a result of a bad drug experience. My major concern at the time was sleep because the anxiety had been keeping me up to very late at night, my doctor prescribed me some anti anxiety drugs and told me to use them to relax myself before bed. 
This worked well and the doctor also referred me to a counselor, after visiting a few people I found a person that seemed to understand things well and work well with me although after a few sessions I barely felt an issue with anxiety anymore and decided I did not really need to go anymore.

After my anxiety became less of an issue I started to feel more depersonalisation and derealisation, things didnt look as vivid and real, I started to feel quite numb emotionally, I often felt I was my body was on autopilot because I didnt feel like I was thinking about my movements or speech to the extent I used to. 
I approached my doctor again and told him about these feelings, I also told him I was quite worried because I thought I had schizophrenia due to the emotional numbness and loss of control although he said he was sure I wasnt psychotic because I was explaining my feelings to him and I was concerned about them and that I was not experiencing hallucinations or delusions, there havent been any cases of schizophrenia in my family either.

Recently Ive gotten very concerned again after reading about the damn "Prodromal stage of pyschosis/schizophrenia" I feel like lots of the symptoms match how I feel right now. for example:

- Lack of emotions: find it very difficult to feel happy, exited, cry although I still come off as normal
- I feel ridiculously out of it, spaced out, high whatever you want to call it.
- I find it difficult to form thoughts (I know this sounds really weird ive only seen it mentioned a few times on here but I feel like I cant make thoughts in my mind very well and it takes more time)

- Whenever im alone I get very weird thoughts and feelings that are difficult to explain but I suppose they are very abstract In nature
- I get racing thoughts when im alone

- When alone I sometimes get really persuasive untrue thoughts like the other day I had missed school becuase I had the flu on my first day back I was sitting in the train and because I couldnt see any of my friends/people from my year group my brain tried to convince me that everyone had stayed off because I missed a day?!
I was aware that this was a ridiculous, non logical idea and I knew it was not true but my mind felt like it was persuading me strongly to believe it.
this makes me worried this is a precursor to full on delusions  
- I feel like when I think about all these feelings I start to feel much worse and start to have weirder thoughts and feelings and feel more disconected from myself and when im alone and this happens I start to notice other stuff like something in the corner of my eye will look like its moving or shadows will look a bit intimidating and other things that im worried are precursors to hallucinations 

I just feel like things have gotten incredibly shit recently and I feel like im going mad, but to make things worse I feel like im becoming okay with how im feeling which really does make me feel like im going crazy because its like im not resisting it anymore, the only things that counter the feeling im going crazy is that I prefer spending time with people now to being alone becuase talking and being around people distracts me and I stop caring/feeling wierd and can have great conversations and stuff. Also nobody has noticed anything wierd in how ive been behaving and Im getting on really well with friends and my parents and everything.

Thank you if you've read this I know it was loooooong but I just needed to get all that down


----------



## Babebu (Jan 11, 2013)

Hi, I abslolutely relate to every symptom. I also wanted to make a post like this, because I'm also scared, I can't concentrate at all when I'm alone, to encourage myself, to convince myself I'm fine... All these thoughts... terrible... I hope it's just a period of disorder, I think soon everything will be better. Btw, I'm also Mogwai fan. I played in post-rock band before I got dp. Have you already listened to their new album\ost to french series?


----------



## Mogwai Fan (Feb 3, 2013)

Thanks for the reply, im glad someone else has thoughts that seem wierd and all that. Great to find another mogwai fan too, Ill be checking outbthe new album soon


----------



## Katieb24 (Feb 9, 2013)

Hey I worry about all the same things and have DP as well. To reassure you, if you experience psychosis or shitzophrenia you just have the symptoms. You pretty much don't have the insight to sit around wonder if what you are feeling might be a precursor to something else, that is anxiety.

the fact that you have the insight to think and know that certain thoughts or feelings is illogical means you are sane and just have DP/DR. With DP/ DR you are aware that you don't feel like yourself which is probably why you are on a site trying to find some answers. If you were experiencing psychosis or schitzoprenia you really wouldn't be aware that how you are behaving is odd at all. In fact, the person is usually not aware. It is usually friends and family members that notice and send the person to be evaluated.

The reason I know this is because I have a friend of a friend that has schizophrenia. He was the college roommate of my friend, which is how I knew him. I was asking my friend how he found out that he had it and the reason was because he believed his father was trying to kill him. He didn't sit around worrying about hallucinating or having delusions, he believed with every ounce of his being that his father was trying to kill him and acted accordingly. It was his family and friends that noted the odd behavior and sent him into be evaluated, which is when they found out.(By the way, he is doing ok. He has a team of doctors that have him on a good medication and from what I know he is still able to go about his life normally)

I'm like you, where if I hear something, I have to validate that I'm not hearing things...if I see a shadow or something, I'm hyper-sensitive to it and thinking "what if this is a precursor to a hallucination".

The fact that we experience worry and dread over a fear of these things happening is an anxiety problem hence the DP/DR.

I know it's not super reassuring but I hope it's somewhat helpful.


----------



## Mogwai Fan (Feb 3, 2013)

Big thanks to you Katie  posted this in a period where I was waiting for my first appointment with a psychologist/counselor but really wanted some questions answered. Your reply, Susto's and Maksud's were really helpful and reassuring and were very useful in that annoying period.


----------



## Mogwai Fan (Feb 3, 2013)

Its really reassuring to know other people have your symptoms so if anyone else isnt sure about their symptoms feel free to post them here and Ill see if I can be of any help


----------



## JJ70 (Nov 1, 2010)

> Fear of going crazy
> - Fear of losing control


To put your mind at rest "if you think your going crazy (going to loose control, hurt someone etc.)....then your not".



> Excess energy


Not the most common symptom with DP/DR; most people have less energy; I say most but everybody is different.

To give you some hope; your not alone the condition is common and not the hardest condition to beat (although a horrendous one); I and many others have recovered so can you.

Good luck with your recovery.

JJ


----------



## Katieb24 (Feb 9, 2013)

I'm glad it was helpful. I especially relate to your lack of emotion symptoms. When I was googling it and schitzoprenia came up I was terrified. So the fact that we both have dr/dp and were worried about this is totally reassuring.

I'm been recovering and noticed today that my emotions were coming back. This is kind of funny but I had a dream I was forced to marry my cousin. When I woke up I felt relief like i've never felt before. Then my mom was yelling at me about selling my furniture, and instead of arguing her without really "feeling it" today the emotions were stronger. So as the emotions come back to you, the more you really start to feel alive again which is when you can start calming down and just living your life again.


----------



## sheldon780 (Apr 17, 2013)

I've been worrying about this to, I feel distant and emotionless most of the time. I too hear this can be an early symptom of schitzo and that freaks me out, I've had anxiety issues all of my life (mostly hypochondria) and over the years I've become more anti-social. I have only really been experiencing DP/DR over the last 2 and a half weeks and it is utter hell on earth. Sometimes I feel like a robot, I feel very distant and I feel like I can't connect with life. Tons of existential thoughts and questions too. Always pondering on what life is, what emotions are, why people do what they do, it's just maddening and it causes tons of anxiety, then I sometimes thing, maybe I'm just losing my mind and I'll end up living in a home or in the psych ward, never able to move on with my life. It's not a fun place to be, but I know I can't be crazy, I've been fine most of my life, but I still question things, lost all of my confidence and self-esteem. I pray we all get through this together, and hopefully we don't have to deal with psychosis and schitzo ever. We're all probably fine, just anxious and worried over nothing!!!


----------



## Midnight (Jul 16, 2011)

sheldon780 said:


> I've been worrying about this to, I feel distant and emotionless most of the time. I too hear this can be an early symptom of schitzo and that freaks me out, I've had anxiety issues all of my life (mostly hypochondria) and over the years I've become more anti-social. I have only really been experiencing DP/DR over the last 2 and a half weeks and it is utter hell on earth. Sometimes I feel like a robot, I feel very distant and I feel like I can't connect with life. Tons of existential thoughts and questions too. Always pondering on what life is, what emotions are, why people do what they do, it's just maddening and it causes tons of anxiety, then I sometimes thing, maybe I'm just losing my mind and I'll end up living in a home or in the psych ward, never able to move on with my life. It's not a fun place to be, but I know I can't be crazy, I've been fine most of my life, but I still question things, lost all of my confidence and self-esteem. I pray we all get through this together, and hopefully we don't have to deal with psychosis and schitzo ever. We're all probably fine, just anxious and worried over nothing!!!


Yeah, I've been worried about schizophrenia for quite some time.

I've been told that I don't have schizophrenia by:-

My GP

2 therapists

People on several forums (including this one)

My Parents

Friends

Neurologist

I STILL don't believe any of them and I'm convinced im in an early stage. Life seems to slip away more and more as the months go by in very subtle ways, particularly in terms of my senses feeling weaker


----------

