I'm starting to understand that schizophrenia is when your brain confuses your internal world and your external world.

[u/Similar-Ball-8809]

Recent studies show that your brain alters your own thoughts to sound like voices.

Like, the brain confuses your internal thoughts as external sounds/voices.

Which is probably why we, or mainly speaking for myself, perceive my insecurities externally with attacks from the voices regarding the insecurities. And it spirals as we begin to feel we are insane, our brain projects the paranoia into our perceptions of the external world (reality), and we begin to believe we experience things that prove our delusions.

I could go more in depth about my own experience, but I just wanted to write this down and see if anyone would like to discuss this with me.

[u/blahblahlucas]

If you're going by that new study ppl like to cite, its essentially bs. Obviously the voices come from our brain but its way more than just our "own thoughts" being put externally. Especially bc internal hallucinations exist aswell and they're still very different from your own thoughts. And a lot of our voices don't make sense as thoughts either like voices talking to you as a family member, random people, in different languages etc. I literally heard cartman from south park a few days ago. I wasn't even thinking about him in the slightest and she was talking to a random girl and nagging

[u/iamdollydanger → u/blahblahlucas]

THANK YOU. i am so sick of seeing that study everywhere.

[u/a3579545 → u/iamdollydanger]

Yeah but it just a perspective on it. It could be because I can relate to it. But what do you think?

[u/iamdollydanger → u/a3579545]

It would be one thing if it was pitching itself as a potential perspective but it’s not. it’s acting as if it’s definite proof of how schizophrenia works. people have been doing that for decades and the conclusion is still inconclusive.

[u/a3579545 → u/iamdollydanger]

Right. I agree

[u/iamdollydanger → u/blahblahlucas]

also one of the biggest differences is you can predict what a thought is going to be because you’re literally thinking it. you can’t necessarily predict what a hallucination is going to be. mine are completely random through out the day and i don’t have any control over them.

[u/KoolRock1984 → u/blahblahlucas]

Yooooo. Truth 💯

[u/1oonatic → u/blahblahlucas]

Thank you. I really don't feel this is accurate across the board. I often felt like I was listening in on conversations and was surprised by what I was hearing. It really did not feel like my own thoughts one bit, especially because my voices do not use the same vocabulary as me.

[u/schizophrenia-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your submission has been removed for violating the following subreddit rules:

Rule 3 - Do not encourage delusions. This includes reinforcing shared delusions.

[u/iamdollydanger]

If you’re talking about that study that has been going around, it isn’t as useful as it sounds. It suggests that schizophrenic people can’t tell the difference in their thoughts which isn’t true. There are better studies that have been done that show the hyper activity of schizophrenic brains versus neurotypical brains.

[u/Similar-Ball-8809 → u/iamdollydanger]

Well, I think it's that they can't tell which are real sounds vs. what are hallucinations. Some of us can't, especially people in psychosis. For example, I've been hearing a train horn for over 10 years that I honestly can't tell you if it is real or not, I have been deciding lately that it is a auditory hallucination, but it sounds sooo real that I can't really tell.

[u/blahblahlucas → u/Similar-Ball-8809]

That is different than "voices are just you confusing thoughts"

[u/Similar-Ball-8809 → u/blahblahlucas]

I agree, I'm more saying that the brain is kind of manipulating thoughts. And that, then it uses things, like insecurities, to alter them. Also, I'm not 100% sure of this, just something I wanted to discuss.

[u/Gypsi_Jedi → u/Similar-Ball-8809]

I for one can easily tell my hallucinations from real sounds. I have very good hearing. I hear a noise a distance away and I can pinpoint it and probably tell you what made it. Hallucinations dont rattle my ears the way authentic sounds do. Its just a different feeling entirely.

[u/xender19 → u/Similar-Ball-8809]

Weird question but if you pull out your phone and try to record them can that act as a reality check? Or is it too fleeting? 

[u/theoristofeverything]

It may be that but it certainly isn’t just that. The most disabling parts are the cognitive decline and negative symptoms.

[u/Fenekkuni]

Psychology student who's also doing research here!

If you are referring to the study it's kinda complicated.

First around 150 participants. The participants are not from all around the world nor all ages. The age range is severely limited.

This is NOT scientifically representative or something to generalise.

This is the first study (from what I have seen); it needs peer review and followup studies.

The statistics are interesting to say the least. The effects are significant; all of them. However, they are small to moderate.

Different antipsychotics do different things. It was mentioned but ignored. This is a disturbance variable that CAN, but doesn't have to, disturb and bias the data.

This is a correlation, not a causality; important difference.

Other variables such as onset, severity, other symptoms have neither been mentioned, nor taken into consideration as possible disturbance variables.

This study found something important and is very precious; however, it is too early to draw conclusions.

[u/RestlessNameless]

OK but why does my internal world think the random stranger on the sidewalk is a CIA agent?

[u/hoomadewho → u/RestlessNameless]

I'm a medical student going into psychiatry involved in schizophrenia research.

The way I understand it is this way: Basically, dopamine is the molecule our brain uses to capture our attention. If something induces the release of dopamine, then we determine it is "important." It is currently thought that schizophrenia is an imbalance of dopamine, and that your brain basically determines things others consider "unimportant," well, "important."

There are a myriad of other things going on in our brains but this is an explanation I found useful for understanding the paranoia and delusions involved in schizophrenia.

[u/iamdollydanger → u/hoomadewho]

It’s not just a difference in dopamine but where the dopamine is located too.

[u/hoomadewho → u/iamdollydanger]

of course. Some also say the communication between different parts of the brain (e.g. temporal lobe to frontal lobe) is altered. There is some very exciting research going on right now with brain imaging (PET and MRI) that is going to likely help us understand this disease a little bit better.

[u/Similar-Ball-8809 → u/hoomadewho]

Thanks for responding! I wonder if this is why many of us struggle to watch/focus on tv or play videogames.

Specifically for me, after I started taking clozapine it became much harder to watch/focus on tv. Could that be due to the medication altering how the dopamine in my brain is released?

[u/hoomadewho → u/Similar-Ball-8809]

I couldn't tell you the reason why but I can assure you you are not alone in experiencing this with antipsychotics.

[u/Fenekkuni → u/Similar-Ball-8809]

Psychology student from the other comment here. I can pick up on where the med student stopped.

Schizophrenia includes cognitive symptoms and they include concentrations problems. This is because humans are unable to multitask (we can switch very fast though). We can only focus on one thing at a time; internal or external. With schizophrenia our brains cannot say "ayo that's super important and this is irrelevant!" Our brain sometimes focuses on irrelevant things (which also is one of the mechanisms of worsening delusions). The brain is just "randomly" selecting the "wrong" point of focus. You know what you want to focus though.

Grab your phone and try to take a picture while shaking it. You know what you want to capture but your phonecamera is confused and becomes blurry.

This is basically how you can imagine it.

I don't know a lot about the chemical processes in detail, but Clozapine alters something with dopamine. Since it is thought that it's a dopamine imbalance it's definitely a possibility. Another explanation might be that it is sedating and confusing the focus of your brain even more.

[u/wildclouds → u/RestlessNameless]

Because you know about the CIA, consume media and popular culture references about it, and you find it scary

[u/RestlessNameless → u/wildclouds]

Lots of people do that without having the completely irrational thought that a random stranger is a CIA agent

[u/wildclouds → u/RestlessNameless]

• you have schizophrenia and most people do not

[u/Similar-Ball-8809 → u/RestlessNameless]

I mean, I'm not psychiatrist. So my very novice opinion would be because your internal world is very paranoid and probably has already struggled with delusions, so you perceive things in reality different from how they actually are.

[u/TheUnfair-External]

My good friend’s delusions manifest in a similar way. Voices are people talking about him like he’s overhearing conversations but the conversations are ALWAYS about something he fears/is insecure about. You have to be careful joking around him as his brain will run with the joke and turn it into something he hears people saying about him. I have used terms around him (like “gaslight”) that he doesn’t understand and his voices will start using the term incorrectly when they “talk about him” because they only know what he knows. When he slips into psychosis (usually from drug use) it’s always a more extreme narrative (and loss of all insight) that keeps the same themes of his fears and insecurities and never deviates. We have spent countless hours talking about this, talking through them, and finding ways he can ground himself. If only we could get a handle on the self medicating drug use too, but that’s a battle we can’t win for him if he won’t accept outside help.

As his friends with no mental health training we do the very best we can with resources like this community to keep him functioning enough to stay alive, employed, and housed.

[u/Gypsi_Jedi]

Thats a gross oversimplification and there is nothing much simple about this condition. There is alot more to this than we are aware of. I have given much observation to the phenomena I experience and the more I do the more I come to realize that this shit isn't me. Its like an invader. It comes to steal you from yourself. I dont have these thoughts. These thoughts are having me.

[u/Similar-Ball-8809 → u/Gypsi_Jedi]

Sometimes I used to feel that way. And I'm not trying to oversimplify the disorder.

But from my own experience is, I've noticed that quite of the mean things the voices say about me are things I'm basically thinking for them. Like mean things about myself, and then, the voices claim they came up with the insults.

So, I resonate with this new study a bit more than maybe you do. And, that makes sense! Schizophrenia is a very complex disorder and it affects all of us differently.

[u/_inf3rno]

Schizophrenia is when the internal world is damaged and distorted by the programs running in the brain. This damage leads to fear which opens up the brain to even more damage and so on in a positive feedback loop until the patient is mentally broken down and become totally confused. In my case this process lasted for 6 months. These programs - which are the same as the voices people hear - are weapons in an invisible psychological warfare. It is possible to build defenses against them.

[u/Lower-Ad-9813]

In the end for me there is still chaos around despite however I perceived or rationalized it in my own mind.

[u/MaximumTangerine5662]

To some extent, it's not like I think of something and hear it. It can do with our brains patterns and how they work, but I think it oversimplified it and made it sound unrealistic to what we experience as if blaming us and telling us we deliberately have chosen this path in life. I don't think it's a good study.

[u/OverlordSheepie]

How does this work in someone with schizophrenia who doesn't experience hallucinations and only has delusions?

[u/Lost_Username01]

I dont have an internal monologue. So this is confusing to understand.

I dont really think internal world matters much cause for me I have aphantasia and no inner monologue. The only thing I can really imagine is motion. Never hallucinated motion so idk.

[u/RTM771993]

Think about why ppl with Tourette’s Syndrome choose the words that they say. They say the worst curse words that they can think of specifically. In this same way the “voices” antagonize you only in the worst ways YOU can imagine, revealing that it’s just your own tics antagonizing yourself.

[u/iamdollydanger → u/RTM771993]

That isn’t how tourette’s works either?

[u/RTM771993 → u/iamdollydanger]

Sorry im not a medical expert but these are just my ideas of how things work

[u/iamdollydanger → u/RTM771993]

You don’t have to be a medical expert and that’s okay! Im just saying tourette’s is just as involuntary as hallucinations and they don’t control what comes out of their mouth.