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