>>1608I could write exactly the same question about me to a point where everyday that passes I ask myself whether I'm schizophrenic or some other shit.
Context, my situation has degraded a lot recently. It's not much compared to a lot of people but I've dropped out of a decent school because of procrastination plus inability to deal with both the amount of work piled up and the ensuing amount of stress. Haven't been doing anything for almost a year now.
People that were friend seem friendly at times but I keep interpreting things they say in a bad way, as if they were making fun of me or insinuating bad things.
When too far away to actually hear anything my brain will be able to just make shit up and be half convinced the muffled discussion were one word barely sounded like my name was about me.
>after someone bricks a portion of your mindFor me, it started gradually after I dropped out of school, at some point I was staying with them so often (since I had nothing better to do) that I realized "wtf am I doing here doing nothing smoking weed when I should be trying to figure out what to do with my fucking life", it was the tipping point where I started having anxiety
>smoking weed>being with my friendsand I basically distanced myself from them more and more as time went by.
The paranoia peaked when smoking pretty dank shit with the closest friend later. That was the bricking part. I wondered if at some point earlier in life I hadn't smoked myself retarded, wondered if that may be related to me dropping out, wondered if I was made fun of much more than I thought and that I was just too stupid to notice. I realized that forever up until now I was "that kid" that just was lucky to never be bullied and whose weirdness went unnoticed because I was just normal enough to be on good terms with people. That lead to me wondering whether this friend of mine realized I was weird and actually way stupider than people made me out to be, and started subtly poking fun at my weirdness.
And this conclusion didn't go away when sobering up. It slowly went away, but it comes and goes, when I go see them and everything goes well, it's good and it fades even more, but if they say something that may be interpreted in favour of that conclusion it comes back at full speed and the overthink machine will start running full throttle again.
The doubt element is the worst, if I was told everything upfront I wouldn't spend that much time cowering and wondering in my head overconscious about how I appear to them. The doubt prolongates the anxiety by not being able to reach a convincing conclusion, I just keep thinking trying to answer what can not be answered with only my point of view. I know that I'm exagerating a part of it, but the fact that I don't know to what extent I'm exagerating things is stressful.
>>1615>What are cliché bullying tactics anyways?In my case, it would be some sort of gaslighting. Not saying anything bad upfront but implying it subtly, which I could bet is what OP is talking about by "alternate versions of reality" : One presented to you, people are nice, and the one you're not 100% sure is real or not where they basically shittalk you, where if you're thinking about it rationally you don't know any reason they may be doing this as they are respectable people, at least before this whole shit started, and they're convincing when trying to reassure you, but at the same time your own opinion of yourself is so low you can only think : if I were them I'd be harshly critical of me.
TL;DR : Dropped out of school, self esteem went down the shitter, started not trusting the sincerity of people around me, keep suspecting scyzophrenia or something similar as a result, OP's post sounded very familiar, though for reasons that stripped it of any /x/ meaning, besides possible mental illness. No offence intended.
