Schizophrenia - General Discussion

I’ve got a massive phobia of poop, so I was wondering
for those of you who deal with this too,
do you think it's something you were genetically predisposed to,
or what?

In my family, nobody deals with anything
mental-related,
it's always just physical stuff.

Is that kind of thing genetic, or can it just hit anyone?

🤷

Larry Howard8 said:In my family, nobody deals with anything
mental-related,
it's always just physical stuff.

Is that kind of thing genetic, or can it just hit anyone?

🤷

There are tons of theories out there—everything from genetics to some weird theory about cat viruses jumping to humans.

Basically, direct descendants of patients carry a much higher genetic load,
whereas kids of patients who didn't develop it aren't significantly more at risk than the rest of the population (around 10%).

People also believe certain toxins can trigger schizophrenia, along with medications, drugs, brain injuries, meningitis, encephalitis, epilepsy... you name it.

Then there’s the theory that overbearing mothers might play a role in triggering it in kids who are already genetically predisposed.

It’s worth noting that twin studies show
twins separated at birth have a really high rate where
both end up with schizophrenia.

That cat thing sounds totally bizarre to me, but then again, when I think about
those crazy cat outbreaks (like those famous ones in O'Hara), I start wondering.

The condition, like a lot of things, can be treated, but unfortunately, for most people, it's chronic and lifelong.

Nothing to lose sleep over, though. We all pick up some kind of s*** sooner or later; we weren't built to last forever anyway.

I’ve heard it said that we all have this potential buried deep inside us, though it usually takes some sort of intense 'trigger' to finally set it in motion... I personally encountered three such individuals, and what truly captivates me about them is their unique way of processing the world—a perspective that a "standard" (if I may say, rather pedestrian)😁genius mind simply cannot grasp. What fascinates me most, though, is their sheer intellectual capacity; they possessed such incredible IQs... they were absolute geniuses!
One of those three was actually my landlord a few years back; he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but for the most part, he was a peaceful man and I never had a single issue with him. My clearest memory involves the time I was buying laminate flooring and carpeting for the apartment. My then-boyfriend and I were sitting there, crunching numbers—calculating square footage, the area for the rug, multiplying that by the cost, then doing the same for the laminate🙄... and while my boyfriend was calling out the figures and I was tapping away on the calculator, before I could even hit the equals sign, this man just blurted out the exact total. My boyfriend and I just stared at him, the way people stare at someone who's lost their grip on reality😂... and then I finally pressed equals, and honestly, I nearly fell right out of my chair. It was spot on, perfectly calculated😲
The second was a painter, an academy graduate who worked as a professor and everything. Once, he was out walking with his little niece when she darted out toward a car, and he blamed himself entirely. That was his trigger—that moment where he just broke. But his paintings after that? They were breathtaking; whenever I looked at them, I felt actual chills running down my spine. When they pushed him into therapy, they completely wiped him out with all those heavy medication cocktails; he turned into a shell of himself, just staring blankly into space now, and even his art has lost that magic touch🤷The spark, that true brilliance, is just gone from him now...
Then there was a colleague of my aunt's, who didn't experience this until she was after thirty, following the collapse of a long-term relationship that she had poured her entire soul into.
Aside from that, I remember her as being exceptionally sharp and brilliant, possessing an incredible sense of perception; her mind was always racing at three hundred miles per hour...
In short, they were all extraordinary in their own ways, possessing that certain "something"... a quality that an average person just can't wrap their head around.
Perhaps they are the ones who are crazy, or perhaps we "normal" people are actually just too dull to comprehend the complexity of what is happening inside their minds...

My little sister told me this thing usually shows up
during puberty while you're still figuring out who you are. Since I'm already 27,
she basically said, "If you didn't get it by now, you're probably in the clear,"
but honestly, I've been worried about it since I was 18...

When did you guys first deal with it?

I really admire people who face any kind of illness with courage
and just refuse to give up....

🙏

Karen Adams2 said:I’ve heard it said that we all have this potential buried deep inside us, though it usually takes some sort of intense 'trigger' to finally set it in motion... I personally encountered three such individuals, and what truly captivates me about them is their unique way of processing the world—a perspective that a "standard" (if I may say, rather pedestrian)😁genius mind simply cannot grasp. What fascinates me most, though, is their sheer intellectual capacity; they possessed such incredible IQs... they were absolute geniuses!
One of those three was actually my landlord a few years back; he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but for the most part, he was a peaceful man and I never had a single issue with him. My clearest memory involves the time I was buying laminate flooring and carpeting for the apartment. My then-boyfriend and I were sitting there, crunching numbers—calculating square footage, the area for the rug, multiplying that by the cost, then doing the same for the laminate🙄... and while my boyfriend was calling out the figures and I was tapping away on the calculator, before I could even hit the equals sign, this man just blurted out the exact total. My boyfriend and I just stared at him, the way people stare at someone who's lost their grip on reality😂... and then I finally pressed equals, and honestly, I nearly fell right out of my chair. It was spot on, perfectly calculated😲
The second was a painter, an academy graduate who worked as a professor and everything. Once, he was out walking with his little niece when she darted out toward a car, and he blamed himself entirely. That was his trigger—that moment where he just broke. But his paintings after that? They were breathtaking; whenever I looked at them, I felt actual chills running down my spine. When they pushed him into therapy, they completely wiped him out with all those heavy medication cocktails; he turned into a shell of himself, just staring blankly into space now, and even his art has lost that magic touch🤷The spark, that true brilliance, is just gone from him now...
Then there was a colleague of my aunt's, who didn't experience this until she was after thirty, following the collapse of a long-term relationship that she had poured her entire soul into.
Aside from that, I remember her as being exceptionally sharp and brilliant, possessing an incredible sense of perception; her mind was always racing at three hundred miles per hour...
In short, they were all extraordinary in their own ways, possessing that certain "something"... a quality that an average person just can't wrap their head around.
Perhaps they are the ones who are crazy, or perhaps we "normal" people are actually just too dull to comprehend the complexity of what is happening inside their minds...

I don't know if I buy that. The meds just slow down the decline, but
it's the disease itself that turns people into shells. Honestly, the sooner they burn bright like a shooting star, the more beautiful—and heartbreaking—it is.

Luckily, I'm not exactly "special" like that, so I guess I'll probably be glowing for a lot longer.

Larry Howard8 said:My little sister told me this thing usually shows up
during puberty while you're still figuring out who you are. Since I'm already 27,
she basically said, "If you didn't get it by now, you're probably in the clear,"
but honestly, I've been worried about it since I was 18...

When did you guys first deal with it?

I really admire people who face any kind of illness with courage
and just refuse to give up....

🙏

My mom thinks I was already diagnosed while she was still pregnant—she had a pretty brutal pregnancy, to say the least. But honestly, I didn't get an official diagnosis until I was around 25... mostly because before then, I had zero interest in talking to those mean doctors in white coats.

Larry Howard8 said:My little sister told me this thing usually shows up
during puberty while you're still figuring out who you are. Since I'm already 27,
she basically said, "If you didn't get it by now, you're probably in the clear,"
but honestly, I've been worried about it since I was 18...

When did you guys first deal with it?

I really admire people who face any kind of illness with courage
and just refuse to give up....

🙏

Oh, honey. It’s not about being brave—it's just that we don't have any other choice. 🤷

Patrick Diaz4 said:My mom thinks I was already diagnosed while she was still pregnant—she had a pretty brutal pregnancy, to say the least. But honestly, I didn't get an official diagnosis until I was around 25... mostly because before then, I had zero interest in talking to those mean doctors in white coats.

Oh, honey. It’s not about being brave—it's just that we don't have any other choice. 🤷

But it’s honestly great that you're getting treatment and that you're aware of what's going on,
and that you can still live a totally normal life with it.
👍

Larry Howard8 said:My little sister told me this thing usually shows up
during puberty while you're still figuring out who you are. Since I'm already 27,
she basically said, "If you didn't get it by now, you're probably in the clear,"
but honestly, I've been worried about it since I was 18...

When did you guys first deal with it?

I really admire people who face any kind of illness with courage
and just refuse to give up....

🙏

Not trying to freak you out or anything, but I know a guy who didn't deal with it until he was 38... I guess everyone's different.

Larry Howard8 said:My little sister told me this thing usually shows up
during puberty while you're still figuring out who you are. Since I'm already 27,
she basically said, "If you didn't get it by now, you're probably in the clear,"
but honestly, I've been worried about it since I was 18...

When did you guys first deal with it?

I really admire people who face any kind of illness with courage
and just refuse to give up....

🙏

It typically manifests around age 18, which is that scenario where it just seems to happen "on its own."
In another scenario, if it's triggered by some incredibly stressful life event, it can really hit you at any stage of your life.

This can manifest at any stage of life, regardless of external stressors.
A later onset typically results in a more favorable prognosis.

What is that supposed to mean? That everyone who goes through some kind of major
trauma, like losing someone close to them,
just ends up with schizophrenia?

🙄

Larry Howard8 said:What is that supposed to mean? That everyone who goes through some kind of major
trauma, like losing someone close to them,
just ends up with schizophrenia?

🙄

Well, maybe not everyone, but certainly some people do.

The prevalence rate within the general American population sits at 1%.
The risk of diagnosis increases significantly if there is a documented positive family history.

Harold Anderson3 said:Well, maybe not everyone, but certainly some people do.

It’s a stretch to claim stress triggers schizophrenia. There’s zero evidence for that out there. Even today, doctors can't pinpoint the exact cause, but they know it’s mostly a hereditary condition.
Stress usually leads to nervous breakdowns, depression, or anxiety, not full-blown psychosis.

Larry Howard8 said:I’ve got a massive phobia of poop, so I was wondering
for those of you who deal with this too,
do you think it's something you were genetically predisposed to,
or what?

🙂 Larry Howard8—why the phobia, though? You seem totally fine to me... My dad has schizo, and back in December last year, I hit an acute psychotic episode with schizophrenic symptoms. It lasted about two months and then cleared up—I'm okay now, just feeling pretty listless and disappointed with everything. I used to live in my own little world and it was great, until life in Los Angeles forced me back into a harsh reality. I'm 27 now. This was my first time through it, and man, I really hope it's the last; I don't want to end up chronic like my dad—that’s a nightmare. When I was 17, I had an episode that felt similar, but it only lasted a month and just went away on its own—back then, people just thought I was being a wild teenager, nobody realized what was actually happening. The truth is, both then and now, stress triggered it—mostly relationship stuff—and I guess I'm just a bit too much of a dreamer. I write novels and love getting lost in my imagination, so when I got let down by my boyfriend and by myself, I just snapped. I broke, I cried, I spiraled until I found myself on "another planet"—a planet of pure fear and hallucinations. That's why anyone with a genetic link needs to watch out for stress and try not to overthink things. Honestly, that goes for everyone else, too. Now I'm living a normal life again, but some days I just can't bring myself to leave my room. I know I can't get lost in my head; I have to fight to stay grounded in the real world, because my imagination can easily pull me right back toward a hospital stay, and I really don't want that. I'm not aggressive, I don't smoke, I'm not messy, but in those places, almost everyone seems a bit off—if you don't smoke, you feel like you have nobody to talk to because you're "different" or whatever.

I just finished watching this absolute masterpiece of a film—it was honestly brilliant.

Schizophrenia is basically just a disease where you lose your own center.

placidridge said:🙂 Larry Howard8—why the phobia, though? You seem totally fine to me... My dad has schizo, and back in December last year, I hit an acute psychotic episode with schizophrenic symptoms. It lasted about two months and then cleared up—I'm okay now, just feeling pretty listless and disappointed with everything. I used to live in my own little world and it was great, until life in Los Angeles forced me back into a harsh reality. I'm 27 now. This was my first time through it, and man, I really hope it's the last; I don't want to end up chronic like my dad—that’s a nightmare. When I was 17, I had an episode that felt similar, but it only lasted a month and just went away on its own—back then, people just thought I was being a wild teenager, nobody realized what was actually happening. The truth is, both then and now, stress triggered it—mostly relationship stuff—and I guess I'm just a bit too much of a dreamer. I write novels and love getting lost in my imagination, so when I got let down by my boyfriend and by myself, I just snapped. I broke, I cried, I spiraled until I found myself on "another planet"—a planet of pure fear and hallucinations. That's why anyone with a genetic link needs to watch out for stress and try not to overthink things. Honestly, that goes for everyone else, too. Now I'm living a normal life again, but some days I just can't bring myself to leave my room. I know I can't get lost in my head; I have to fight to stay grounded in the real world, because my imagination can easily pull me right back toward a hospital stay, and I really don't want that. I'm not aggressive, I don't smoke, I'm not messy, but in those places, almost everyone seems a bit off—if you don't smoke, you feel like you have nobody to talk to because you're "different" or whatever.

It's awful having to go through that just because of your genetics, through no fault of your own...

🤷

hollowtinker18 said:Schizophrenia is basically just a disease where you lose your own center.

In that case, I suppose I have it.🙄