Misdiagnosed as "Schizophrenic"

Anonymous

It all began at the age of fifteen when I fell madly in love with a girl in my class. I was in love with her for almost two years. At that time I was too afraid to tell her.

After those two years, I suddenly became anxious and uncertain about myself and I didn't understand why. These feelings went on for about two weeks. Then one Sunday morning when I woke up, my world had completely changed. I didn't know who I was anymore. It was as if my brain had forgotten me overnight. Some other symptoms appeared. I was only able to see in two dimensions. It was as if I was looking through a window that showed a two-dimensional image. I couldn't see it any differently. This was how I saw the world.

Something else was happening: it seemed like my voice was sitting in the back of my head.

My voice wasn't coming from my mouth any more. It felt like somebody else was talking. I panicked. From one moment to the next I had turned from a passionate lover into a complete alien. If this was the way I had to live for the rest of my life, then not anymore. I was thinking about ending my life. The thought to commit suicide was not just something that passed through my mind, it was a well considered choice. I wanted to jump in front of a train, which is, as I understand it now, a symbolic expression of how fragmented I was inside. I finally decided not to do it and I ended up in a psychiatric hospital for about six months. I started to take medication. I took ten pills a day. Because I was saying that I heard conversations in my head, I got medication to suppress those voices in my head. Something I was thinking and telling them all the time was that I wasn't seeing reality. I wasn't in touch with it any more.

I had the feeling of being so far removed from reality. It felt like a memory from long ago. I think because the doctors in the hospital had never heard somebody telling a story like this, they just needed a label they could put on me for their records. They diagnosed me "schizophrenic" and "psychotic." Despite the fact that I was diagnosed as such, I had the feeling that something else was going on but I didn't know what that could be.

I went back to school when I left the hospital. It was a very hard time. Every day I had to find a good reason for myself to get out of bed and to go to school. For many years I felt very tired.

I went for psychotherapy. Over the first years I saw many psychologists and psychiatrists. None of them could tell me what exactly was going on with me. I didn't get the answers I was so badly craving. I quit therapy several times over the years. I went back for therapy every time I started a new relationship, because then I was confronted again with something that was still wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. In my relationships I always had that feeling of not being able to love.

After four years of taking medication, I quit. I decided I could do it on my own. I didn't need it anymore. I haven't taken any medication since.

At the age of twenty-five I said goodbye to psychotherapy. I discovered spirituality, which was a new way to find answers about what had happened to me. New doors opened to me. I met interesting people on this new path.

Today I am thirty-four years old and it was only two years ago that I recognised for myself that I was showing a lot of symptoms of trauma. But I couldn't think of any trauma that I had experienced in my born life.

I went for a search on the internet, looking for trauma healing. This is how I arrived on Althea Hayton's website. I recognised myself completely in the description of a womb twin survivor. I immediately started the 'womb twin work'. Only after two weeks of doing this work I started to feel much better and I was growing stronger day by day.

I had arrived. I finally had found the last piece of the puzzle. Or was it the first piece of a new puzzle?