Dear vaishu:

You wrote about your real life experience: “I trusted wholeheartedly (your ex boyfriend)… he was cheating on me… betrayed… I never had actual good friends before this year. I have been cheated by few of my so called best friends…And I have this feeling of being hated by people around me… My parents aren’t friendly…I don’t trust anyone at the school either… Few of the so called best friends I made this year started avoiding me.”

About your virtual life experience you wrote: “I’ve never met them in my real life. I swear, they are far more kind and friendly and straight forward than the people outside my world… More friendly. More understanding. Less judgmental. And yeah. They are my comfort zone.”

You wrote that your new friends, in real life, didn’t give you a straight answer when you asked why they avoid you. Your virtual friends are straightforward with you. People in your real life criticize you for your rap and calligraphy skills. But when you “ended up showing my hidden skills to the hallucinations and my virtual friends”, they “were more open to me and they don’t insult and make fun of me or irritate me or let me down”.

My understanding: an ex boyfriend cheated on you, betrayed your trust in him. A classmate, after a physically intimate interaction, broke up with you. Best friends betrayed you and avoid you. Your parents aren’t friendly with you. You lost trust.

You are creative, in your rapping and calligraphy, correct? It is your very creativity that led to the creation of these 4- 5 people in your life, virtual friends.

You need people in hour life who will be friendly toward you, who will be trustworthy, understanding, not judgmental, not critical. You don’t have such people in your life. No wonder you created such people.

Only these virtual friends are not enough. They provide you comfort but you are still unhappy. You are unhappy because you live in your virtual, made up world only part of the time. The rest of the time you live in the real world, interacting with your parents, classmates, teachers.

I believe that you need one person, in real life, who will be these things for you: understanding, accepting, not critical, not judgmental. I may be such a person. You don’t see me, but I am not made up. I am a real person typing these words.

Better, way better to have such a person in your physical life, someone present right there. I suggested that you see a counselor in school, or a teacher. Is there one, just one person in school, a teacher or a counselor who may be these things that you need him/ her to be, for you?

anita

Dear vaishu:

You are welcome. You lost hope but you can find it again. You wrote that I put up my heart and soul to understand what exactly you are trying to say. Well, you can say more, tell me more, today and any other day. Come back here and type away, and I will keep trying to understand you.

Even better, someone else may try, in your life outside the computer, just have to find that person.

anita

Dear vaishu:

To determine if you are schizophrenic there is a need for a medical doctor, a psychiatrist to meet with you and talk with you. There are many mental diagnoses collected in a book called Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, for short, DSM. The latest version of it is DSM-5. Each diagnosis included criteria that need to be met so to diagnose an individual with that disorder. A person who is not a competent and certified psychiatrist is not qualified to make these diagnoses. Also, even a competent and certified psychiatrist cannot or must not determine a diagnosis without meeting the person face to face and talking, maybe over a few sessions, not just one, asking the person questions, listening to the answers and so on.

Therefore I am not qualified to make any of these diagnoses.

What I do know is that we are all humans and share a lot in common. Many children have imaginary friends they talk to, or they talk to their dolls and imagine whole conversations. I have conversations in my own head, talking to people who are not really there. I often stop myself, saying to myself: I am not having a conversation, there is no one here but me!

When I am having a conversation, alone, I hear the person’s thoughts but I know it is my thoughts that I am hearing and not a voice that exists outside of me.

Lots of the symptoms listed in the DSM exist for everyone but to different degrees. For example, some hear their thoughts when having imaginary conversations with people who are not there and other people hear their thoughts so loudly that they imagine that the people are there, after all.

anita