Participant Thirteen: F

“I think that many people have the same problem as me, so hopefully these pictures can help for the next person. I use these pictures to help me, this is part of my mind. There is nothing I can do to change it, so I just have to accept it and only to think whether this is my imagination … Because if you think about imagination, you always think imagining something nice. But this is so complicated, why do you want to see all this, so complicated. That’s why I realised that my mind is not the same mind that other people know. A lot of people when they have problems they don’t know that they have a problem. So people know whether I got a problem or not, they can see my thing, to provide something with the pictures to tell people. And when people look at the pictures, it can help them to understand about the mentality of someone suffering with mental health. When you look at the picture, the picture is always there for you. Then you can think about ‘Oh my God, how that happened’ and you can share to people. So I can ask ‘do you see what I see now?’ and ‘are you experiencing the same as I do?’ and then they say ‘yes’ and you know that at least you’re not alone. In this society, still a lot people have similar problems to you, so maybe you feel that you feel a bit better in that way. Because before I start, I’m so scared and thought in the whole world it was only me. I’m so scared, people think I’m mad, that I’m crazy and they will put me into a mental hospital. I’m so scared to share it. But now because I’ve been in the therapy group, when I go there are same things, same problems. So you’re thinking it’s nothing to be scared about.”

“Where I walk by I always saw a lot of people. I can see that their faces are different. And I feel some of them follow me, like step on me on the back like that. So that’s why I’m so scared to walk in a crowd – too many people. I’m so scared because they make me feel nervous. On the street there are a lot of people, some of them are young, old. When I look at the people, their shapes change, sometimes they have a horrible shape like evil. I see a lot of faces change. It could be an old man, it could be a young man, it could be a horrible, horrible faces that keep changing all the time. That’s why I sometimes cannot see face-to-face, I have to take away my tension because the more I look, the more their faces are changing. When I walk past someone, I always see someone at the back wait for me and ask me to come. A shade of a human being behind the person. And then I don’t look at them because I’m so scared. Because if I look at that and they are waiving at me, so I try to avoid it. The first time I experienced this I was very small, I didn’t think, I did not know I was hearing voices. I thought it was just my own voice. Not until I came to London here, that was about 10 years ago, and I went to the doctor who told me I’m hearing voices.”

“Where I walk by I always saw a lot of people. I can see that their faces are different. And I feel some of them follow me, like step on me on the back like that. So that’s why I’m so scared to walk in a crowd – too many people. I’m so scared because they make me feel nervous. On the street there are a lot of people, some of them are young, old. When I look at the people, their shapes change, sometimes they have a horrible shape like evil. I see a lot of faces change. It could be an old man, it could be a young man, it could be a horrible, horrible faces that keep changing all the time. That’s why I sometimes cannot see face-to-face, I have to take away my tension because the more I look, the more their faces are changing. When I walk past someone, I always see someone at the back wait for me and ask me to come. A shade of a human being behind the person. And then I don’t look at them because I’m so scared. Because if I look at that and they are waiving at me, so I try to avoid it. The first time I experienced this I was very small, I didn’t think, I did not know I was hearing voices. I thought it was just my own voice. Not until I came to London here, that was about 10 years ago, and I went to the doctor who told me I’m hearing voices.”

“Where I walk by I always saw a lot of people. I can see that their faces are different. And I feel some of them follow me, like step on me on the back like that. So that’s why I’m so scared to walk in a crowd – too many people. I’m so scared because they make me feel nervous. On the street there are a lot of people, some of them are young, old. When I look at the people, their shapes change, sometimes they have a horrible shape like evil. I see a lot of faces change. It could be an old man, it could be a young man, it could be a horrible, horrible faces that keep changing all the time. That’s why I sometimes cannot see face-to-face, I have to take away my tension because the more I look, the more their faces are changing. When I walk past someone, I always see someone at the back wait for me and ask me to come. A shade of a human being behind the person. And then I don’t look at them because I’m so scared. Because if I look at that and they are waiving at me, so I try to avoid it. The first time I experienced this I was very small, I didn’t think, I did not know I was hearing voices. I thought it was just my own voice. Not until I came to London here, that was about 10 years ago, and I went to the doctor who told me I’m hearing voices.”

“I have taken this picture when I walk on the pavement. Sometimes when you walk on the pavement you see a crack. So when I see the crack in the pavement, I don’t step on the crack because if I step on it I think that the crack is like an earthquake on a movie. I feel like the pavement is shaking so I have to avoid it and go to another part of the pavement which is not cracking. If I walk on that I can feel my body being dragged down into the crack and the rubble is on top of me. When you look at this picture, you may say this is just a crack on the pavement, but when I look at that I didn’t look at the crack, I look at something else now.”