Finding a Place to Call Home

Our tenth support group meeting brought together seven of us from different parts of the world. It was one of our longest and most reflective conversations so far, moving through questions of identity, spirituality, love, belonging, and the longing to find a place that truly feels like home. The meeting began with one member sharing that they had experienced a difficult week. They described a frightening moment of feeling detached from their own body, almost as though they were watching themselves from outside. Having believed they had fully recovered, this experience shook their confidence and left them wondering whether they were slipping back into psychosis. As they spoke, I found myself wishing they had not gone through those moments alone. It reminded me why community matters—not because we always have answers, but because sometimes another person simply knowing what we are going through can make an unbearable experience feel a little less isolating. Another member reflected on living symptom-free for several years. Rather than focusing on past experiences, they spoke about building a life through daily routines—sleep, food, water, work, and caring for their dog. Recovery, for them, had become less about searching for dramatic breakthroughs and more about returning, each day, to ordinary acts of living. This led naturally to a conversation about sleep. One participant shared how insomnia often became the beginning of everything unravelling. Nights were filled with thoughts that no longer felt private, as though everyone could somehow hear them. They described feeling pulled into a black hole—a powerful image of isolation and despair. As we stayed with that image together, I wondered what it might be like not to run from that emptiness, but to gently approach it with another person beside us. Sometimes our first instinct is to close every door and keep others away. Yet perhaps healing also begins when we slowly allow someone to sit with us in those places we have always carried alone. Throughout the meeting, we returned again and again to the question of identity. One member quietly asked, "Who am I?" They spoke about feeling as though there was no stable sense of self inside them. Other people's emotions, expectations, and personalities seemed to enter so easily that it became difficult to know where they ended and where they themselves began. Listening to this, I realised how often schizophrenia is described in terms of symptoms, while the deeper struggle—the search for one's own identity—is rarely spoken about. Another participant reflected on childhood experiences of abuse and how, growing up, violence had become confused with love. If love has never been experienced safely, how do we learn what love truly is? That question stayed with me. I found myself thinking of Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving, where he suggests that love is not simply a feeling but something we learn and practise throughout our lives. Perhaps many of us were never taught that language. Perhaps learning to love—and to receive love—is itself part of recovery. The conversation gradually turned towards spirituality. Several members spoke openly about spiritual experiences that had accompanied psychosis. Some described visions, others moments of profound connection, while another reflected on choosing "the stairs instead of the lift to heaven"—a deeply moving metaphor for choosing the slow, difficult work of living rather than escaping reality. What touched me most was not whether these experiences were interpreted as spiritual or psychological. It was that everyone felt free to speak about them without fear of ridicule. One participant remarked that they had never experienced another schizophrenia support group where conversations about spirituality could unfold so naturally. Perhaps healing requires spaces where every part of our experience can be explored with curiosity rather than immediately judged or explained away. Towards the end of the meeting, another theme quietly emerged. Many of us spoke about wanting to run away. To disappear into the mountains. To leave everything behind. To find another world where we could finally rest. Others remembered finding that sense of home only in the companionship of a dog or another animal—relationships where love did not depend upon performance, diagnosis, or explanation. As I listened, I realised that perhaps none of us truly wanted to escape life itself. We were searching for somewhere we could finally belong. Somewhere we could be loved without pretending. Somewhere we did not have to hide. Leading this group has slowly changed something in me too. Therapy helped me understand myself, but community has helped me recognise myself in relationship with others. It has taught me to notice when something hurts, to value my own boundaries, and to discover that healing does not happen only inside the consulting room. It also happens when people gather, listen deeply, and remind one another that vulnerability does not have to be carried alone. As we closed the meeting, I found myself wondering whether this is what we have been building together all along. Not simply a support group. But a home. A place where people living with schizophrenia can arrive exactly as they are, carrying their fears, their voices, their grief, their spirituality, and their longing—and discover that there is still room for all of it. Perhaps belonging is not something we find. Perhaps it is something we create together.

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