I also asked a friend who was diagnosticated with schizophrenia to write his life experience for this article:
“ Since I was a young child, I have always struggled to deal with my authoritative parents, and with a society that seems to have never understood me. As a kid, I suffered constant verbal abuse, spankings and a few times was even beaten up. My father was the worst at doing this, sometimes he would be away for a few weeks on a business trip, and now I realize that those were the most peaceful moments I had in my childhood, I remember becoming sick in my stomach from fear the moment I noticed he walked in the door.
Emotional trauma can be much worse than actual physical trauma in these situations. The fact that I came from a family of very educated people seems to have made matters worse, being humiliated by some random kid that can hardly pronounce words is one thing; being humiliated by a highly skilled orator is another. My father was my worst nightmare, and also my hero for his ability of fixing anything he put his mind into, and the encyclopedia like knowledge about anything I could ask him, which are skills that I have learned and have served me well throughout my life. Looking back to my days in school, I can see now that many children had similar family histories, and some had it even worse than me, but each child chooses to deal with it in a different manner. I became a very kind kid who was often quiet, keeping my problems to myself, while some kids saw in me the opportunity to enact the anger they felt at their parents, by picking on me and sometimes even beating me up (nothing serious though). I guess those kids who see the world as an opportunity to reenact their own suffering in others are the ones who later tend to become the narcissists and sociopaths, while the kids who keep their suffering to themselves, and even try to absorb the suffering of others are the ones who later tend to develop depression, schizophrenia and autoimmune related disease.
I had a feeling of profound sadness throughout my childhood, and it became increasingly worse during adolescence, at age 17 could no longer work and had problems graduating in my middle school/computer technician degree. After missing about half of my classes, I failed to get my computer technician degree and was only allowed to finish middle school because of good grades.