Here are the root symptoms of the other symptoms (symptoms that explain the presence of other symptoms).
As I have said elsewhere, people with psychiatric disorders have, I believe, only an exacerbation of normal brain phenomena. Same for schizophrenia in very extreme.
I believe that a large part of the symptoms of schizophrenia can be explained by these 7 root symptoms!
• 1) Having ideas of persecution
Even if I am aware of having ideas of persecution and of being susceptible, this does not solve the problem. In my opinion, this symptom of schizophrenia can be explained by the fact that the circuit that manages the consideration of threats is overactivated. Imagining dangers in an intense way is a normal phenomenon, for example when you have just been attacked in the street. And in this state of danger, we consider these dangers as almost real, there is a reason for this: when there is a real danger (for example when you have just been attacked and there may be other hidden attackers), you absolutely have to take these threats into account, the brain is made in such a way that in a state of alert we consider these dangers as very probable so that we pay attention to them. Feeling in danger and not being serene but in a very intense way (having two or three ideas of persecution per second for example), logically leads to making crazy scenarios and feeling them as almost real, which is a symptom of schizophrenia.
Professor Fourtillan’s hypothesis that the excess arousal hormone could explain the symptoms of schizophrenia seems quite conceivable to me. I explain it in more detail at the end of the document.
• 2) Getting stuck on certain ideas, thinking that they are very important and having thoughts in the background
I heard that it was called a serotonergic peak. When I experience this, I tend to think that an idea is very important and that it is absolutely necessary to take it into account and make it known to a part of the population to save them. I believe that these ideas occur in patients who, in addition to having schizophrenia, have an attention deficit disorder. Indeed, when you have this disorder, you tend to be very attracted, motivated by things that give a reward, like for example playing a video game where you win, or doing things that in our eyes seem very important for humanity (like finding a cure for cancer). When you have ADHD, you have such an intense desire to do these things that it becomes very difficult to do basic things (like doing the dishes). Then you are so attracted to these things all the time, feeling the obligation to do them, that you end up being totally exhausted by these ideas, and then you need to escape, like for example by watching YouTube videos. This is what I experience. I think that these sometimes quite crazy ideas that I had, having the strong intuition that they were important, are due to the mixture of ADHD and schizophrenia. There is a description of this disorder here ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And here is a good video of a psychiatrist explaining a supposed mechanism of ADHD on youtube.
There is also the fact that my mind remains stuck in the background on things that I think about all day without being able to erase them and without really realizing it. It is sometimes only late in the evening that I realize that during the whole day I had certain thoughts in the background.
• 3) Being very anxious combined with feeling guilty and being afraid of hurting others
I think it’s these two fears combined that led me to have impulse phobias. These are scenarios where I imagined hurting others or myself. Like throwing myself under a train. In reality, I was afraid that I would end up doing it one day, but I didn’t want to do it. I would never have done that.
• 4) Fear of being judged by others
I think I’m quite touchy. I often imagine that others judge me negatively (think I’m ridiculous, think I’m a bit crazy), and it hurts me a lot. Today I worry less about it, but I know that I have a sensitivity above normal. I used to think about other people’s judgment of me on a loop, and it was permanent and very heavy when I was not on treatment.
The fact of appearing strange in conversations is in my opinion, due to the intense fear of appearing strange, crazy, therefore to this fear of judgment. Thus, without treatment, I was afraid every moment when I spoke of saying something shocking or serious without doing it on purpose, that my attitude and my blockages would make me seem strange, dangerous. I could seek approval in the eyes of others. But when I looked at them, I felt judged (I felt that they took me for a dangerous madman by looking at them quickly and avoiding their gaze) and I was afraid, really afraid, of being judged as someone serious. So I quickly looked away. I was paralyzed and anxious all over, and I looked weird.
This fear of judgment also leads to not having confidence in myself. It often led me to tell myself that my ideas were completely stupid: to tell myself first that they were brilliant, then to end up thinking that it was completely ridiculous to have thought that.
Also, during the impulse phobias (imagining hurting others, and terribly dreading that it would actually happen), I was very afraid of being seen badly if others knew that I imagined hurting others, or myself. So it was also this fear of judgment that amplified these impulse phobias.
• 5)For autistic symptoms, the fear of feeling judged coupled with the lack of feeling of complicity
When I didn’t understand jokes, it was often due to a lack of complicity. I didn’t understand that the person was teasing me in many cases. I was also afraid of being judged. I was afraid of coming across as the idiot who didn’t understand jokes well, rather than getting into the game.
I also had trouble understanding people’s intentions in their gestures and in their relationships.
• 6) Spontaneously making up scenarios all the time
I always have lots of scenarios that come to mind, they clutter my thoughts, and it then becomes more difficult to express myself and have a quality, detailed reflection. This is probably why, when I explain something complicated, I express myself quite badly: lots of ideas come to me at the same time which limits my ability to formulate my ideas well.
• 7) Weird ideas
Sometimes I have intense intuitions about somewhat strange beliefs. It’s quite rare compared to other people with schizophrenia, but it happens to me. I’ll explain one of these intuitions: I always hope that we can make a better world without suffering, I’m always afraid that we won’t get there, I consider the suffering of schizophrenics, of profoundly autistic people, and the suffering of other people as serious and heavy, and I want it to improve, I imagine things against that. In this context, I often intensely believe that a supernatural phenomenon causes there to always be as much happiness as suffering in the world, and therefore that it is impossible to resolve this, it worried me and took me a long time to think about it. I had this strong intuition that through this supernatural phenomenon it is impossible to make the world happy. This supernatural phenomenon can perhaps exist, for example if suffering and happiness are managed by quantum phenomena that make the sum of the two zero, but it remains a hypothesis, I had a strong intuition, that’s where it’s wrong. Here too, it can be due to an over-stimulation of the area of the brain that manages intuition, that creates strong intuitions. And again it is consistent with the hypothesis of an excess of the hormone of awakening in schizophrenia that I explain below: at night we do not have intuitions in our sleep, during the day, it can happen that we have light intuitions, if the hormone of awakening is in excess, this mechanism of having intuitions during the day is over activated and we have very strong intuitions.
Another phenomenon that I have experienced is the fact of feeling relationships between people. For example, when I strongly felt that we were living in a virtual world like in the movie Matrix, I had the impression that some people were leaders, present here to get me out of the matrix. I had the impression that other people were there to corrupt me and prevent me from being the chosen one and saving the world. Here too, these feelings are exacerbations of mechanisms more present during the day than at night: The fact of giving roles to certain people. Indeed, when we see a policeman, we know his role and we know that he will expect something particular from us, we put ourselves in a mental situation where everyone has a role. And it’s the same if we meet our boss (we fear him a little and we know that we must respect him), if we meet the person who cleans the leaves in the street, if we see a mother scolding her child (because it is her role because it is her child), we put ourselves in a mental situation that gives them a role. It seems to me that generally at night, in our dreams, we give fewer roles to everyone, and that during the day, we understand that certain people have roles. It is logical that if we are over-awakened by an excess of awakening hormones then we give roles to everyone.
I also sometimes felt that I should not think certain things otherwise the spies of the matrix would detect me and that it would prevent my exit from the matrix. Recently again I sometimes had such intuitions. It was disturbing because I tried not to think about certain things for 30 minutes for example, that is to say the time for this intuition to leave. Here too, at night we are less aware of being observed, and during the day we are more aware of being observed, sometimes we can be aware of being observed to the point that our behavior betrays our thoughts. For example during poker tournaments, some people wear dark glasses to hide their facial expressions that could betray their thoughts. So, yes basically, even if you are not schizophrenic, you can be afraid that your thoughts are being scrutinized, and this phenomenon is more intense during the day. If you are over-awake, if the hormone of awakening is in excess, then you can have the impression that your thoughts are being seen by others. And, without treatment, I actually had this impression that people could read the shameful thoughts that I had just by seeing me in the street, so if I happened to have a serious shameful thought, I was very embarrassed, which, from memory, happened to me every 3 seconds.
The fear of going crazy
The symptom of the fear of going crazy is in my opinion also from these root symptoms. It is due to the fact of always feeling everything as a judgment, the presence of people, that there is no humanity in the eyes of others. By feeling this all the time, we are afraid of going crazy. So it can be explained by symptoms 4).
being madly in love
Being madly in love was due to two ideas for me:
• The fact of terribly regretting sinking into suffering, without seeing a way out, a bit like in the song by Yseult, and being afraid of going crazy. This is logical when you’re feeling really bad.
• And the fact of feeling that there are very important things that you shouldn’t miss (like in ADHD)!
I was actually really hoping that I could recover from my pain, my desolation, my illness, if I went out with the girl I was in love with as if by magic. I really felt like I was missing out on something if I didn’t go out with her (This is point number 2). And since I was afraid of her judgment, I couldn’t help but fear that she would judge me, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her and her judgment (This is point number 4).
Fear of being judged by others combined with the feeling of persecution
As I was saying, I could sometimes feel that someone thought I was crazy and that bothered me. Sometimes I would imagine that this person was passing on the message that I was crazy to other people. This kind of scenario already made me ruminate a lot, especially when I was not on medication. I imagined myself trying to persuade these people that I was not crazy (because their judgment hurt me deeply) without success, I imagined that they would think I was even more crazy, and then I imagined myself trying to persuade them again and so on. Fortunately, now, it is much less intense and I am just a little afraid of being thought of as crazy sometimes. When you think about it, it is the combination of the fear of judgment and the fear of being persecuted that caused this.
Jean-Bernard Fourtillan’s hypothesis explains that schizophrenia would be due to an excess of the arousal hormone
I quite agree, because all the phenomena above that are exacerbated during awakening, are extremely exacerbated during my schizophrenia. For example, often when we sleep, we are not too suspicious, not worried, rested, on the other hand as soon as we are awake we are more alert. Schizophrenia, we are downright too alert, it is as if we were over-awake, as if the arousal hormone was in much too great a concentration. Similarly, we are too afraid of the gaze of others, whereas in dreams, we do not care much about the gaze of others. We remain stuck on certain ideas… whereas in dreams even if we forget something, right after, we don’t even realize that we forgot it. In schizophrenia, we are afraid of hurting others, generally in dreams we forget the guilt. etc etc.
So yes for me Fourtillan’s hypothesis is not stupid at all. You can see her in her youtube videos.
Apparently some patients have anosognosia related to a lesion in the brain
Here is an article explaining this. And here is my article on it. Anosognosia is the fact of not being aware of one’s disorder and not questioning one’s psychotic intuitions at all. On the other hand, this symptom can be explained by something different than these root symptoms. This anosognosia would be very real in some people. I did not know this and learned it recently while doing some research. And indeed, some schizophrenic patients talk about their ideas as if they were necessarily real: the fact of having this idea is proof that it is true. I tell myself that it is possible that it is due to a circuit that is differently activated depending on the person concerned. Indeed, some schizophrenics have an excess of interest in absolutely everything (like me), others cruelly lack interest, making their life very difficult. Similarly for anosognosia, certain circuits can be very deactivated. The awareness that the psychotic idea does not hold up well is not there. They fail to prohibit this idea as we can do when we realize that it is stupid.
I find this article interesting because we see that with only a few concepts, I manage to explain a good part of the symptoms of schizophrenia. It’s cool!