so quite a while ago i had gotten this fear of developing schizophrenia due to some personal problems, and then it just got worse and worse because the topic kept coming up in everyday conversations, and i could never escape from it. i don’t want to disclose what happened fully, but i will slightly just for some context: quite a few years ago, i watched someone close to me go through symptoms of schizophrenia. some things happened during that time which made me incredibly afraid. at the time, the person who went through it and i realised we had the same interests – creating characters. them and i both created two characters together while this was happening, so they used their character as a way to vent out, meaning their character had schizophrenia. it didn’t bother me at first, because the topic never usually came up. i mean, we were about 12. but now we’re older and we still have these characters, meaning we talk about them in a more... mature way i guess?? we’ve built a storyline together with them, and a lot of it IS based around schizophrenia. and i feel horrible for saying it because i feel petty and rude, but talking about it constantly over and over seemed to grow my fears, because the more i learned about it, the more my ocd could try and convince me that i had it. it got to this horrible point where the distressing thoughts would NEVER leave my head. i honestly thought i was going to lose it because i felt so horrible for having this fear/becoming obsessed with schizophrenia. i felt so insensitive because i obviously don’t have it which seems almost degrading to the people that do. i couldn’t even tell my friend because i thought it would translate as me blaming them for my problems. although at the beginning of the year, we both said that we were going to make another two characters and work on them instead this year. and we have been for months. it was literally a breath of fresh air – although the fear of schizophrenia stayed, i wasn’t being constantly reminded of it all the time. it wasn’t until tonight that i found out that the fears were just lying dormant. we went back to talking out our original characters today and we’re revamping their story. then it got to the parts where it mentioned schizophrenia, and i was being asked so many questions and being told so many things that i seemed to get overwhelmed - it was like a flashback to how i felt a few months ago. what i feel like now, i don’t even know how i dealt with constantly for about a year. and i absolutely hate this because why should i not educate myself on other mental health disorders? why can i not talk about one single illness (mental or physical) without my ocd becoming obsessed with it and trying to convince me that i have it? honestly sometimes you just want to scream